SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: GYNECOLOGIA

 "Gynecologia" by Gilbert Cannan (from Windmills, A Book of Fables, 1915)

Gilbert Cannan (1884-1955) was a British translator (Rolland's Jean-Christophe, Heine's Memoirs, and books by Chekhov and Larbaud), novelist, essayist, poet, and playwright who managed to published more than thirty titles over fifteen years before he succumbed to insanity and was institutionalized for the last 32 years of his life.  In 1914, near the beginning of his career, Cannan was listed as one of four significant up-and-coming authors by Samual Butler; the other three were D. H. Lawrence, Compton Mackenzie, and Hugh Walpole -- heady company, indeed.  Cannan served as secretary to J. M. Barrie and began a relationship with Barrie's wife whom he eventually married; not only did Cannan get Barrie's wife, he also got Barrie's Newfounsland Luath, who was the inspiration for the Darling's dog Nana in Peter Pan.  An earlier relationship failed when the woman left him for explorer Robert Falconer Scott.  When his marriage ended in divorce, he began an affair with Gwen Wilson ("a show stopping beauty"), and when Wilson married British MP Henry Mond, 2nd Baronet Melchett, the three of them formed a menage a trois.  Cannan's circle included D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murray, Dora Carrington, Bertrand Russell, Ottoline Morrell, Dorothy Brett, C. R. W. Nevinson, and the artist Mark Gertler.   One of his cousins was the noted mystery novelist Joanna Cannan.  A pacifist and conscientious object, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1916, in part due to the horror of war but also the possibility that he might be conscripted.   A more significant mental breakdown occurred in 1923 an proved to be incurable; he was sent to the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, and then confined to Hollooway /sanitarium for the rest of his life.

"Gynecologia" appeared as the third story in the collection Windmills, which tells of the fictional (and allegorical) country of Fatland, whose traditional enemy were the Fatters.  This particular tale satirizes in some detail the near-future sexual mores of that dystopia as reported by American Conrad Lewis:

"I, Conrad P. Lewis, of Crown Imperial, Pa., U.S.A., do hereby declare that the following narrative of my adventures is a plain truthful tale with nothing added or taken away.  At the end of a long life I am able to remember unmoved things that for many years I could not call to mind without horror and disgust.  Even now I cannot see the charming person of my daughter without some faint discomfort, to be rid of which (for I would die in peace) I have determined to write my story.

"The whole civilized world will remember how, during the years when Europe was sunk under the vileness of a scientific barbarism, there was suddenly an end of news from Fatland.  Our ships that sailed for her ports did not return.  Her flag had disappeared from the high seas.  Her trade had entirely ceased.  She exported neither coal nor those manufactured goods which had carried her language, customs, and religion to the ends of the earth.  Her colonies (we learned) had received only a message to say that they must in future look after themselves, as, indeed, they were capable of doing as any other collection of people.  In one night Fatland ceased to be.

"It was at first assumed that her enemies the Fatters had invaded and captured her, but, clearly, they would not destroy her commerce.  Moreover, the Fatters were at that time and for many years afterwards living in a state of siege, keeping nine hostile nations at bay upon their frontiers.  This was the last of the great wars, leading, as we now know, to the abolition of the idea of nationality, which endowed a nation with the attributes of a vain and insolent human being, so that its actions were childish and could only be made effective by force.  When that idea died in the apathy and suffering and bitterness of the years following the great wars then the glorious civilisation which we now enjoy became possible."

So, if it wasn't the Fatters. then what could have had such a devastating effect on the once glorious Fatland?

Allegory and satire is always tricky, perhaps even more so when read nearly 110 years after the fact.  nonetheless, this is an enjoyable tale and, for some reason, I felt is appropriate to present it to you now...

The entire book, Windmills, a Book of Fables, is at the link.  the three other stories in the book are "Samways Island", "Ultimus", and ""Out of Work".

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t3513wd0s&seq=1