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Quentin Farkmee

Lord Reginald "Mimsy" Gorcharp

Toulouse Le Grandfig

Gorcharp and Farkmee:
The Teenie-Weenie Plot (1927)

In early January 1927, Emily Chesley had yet to set up house in Clichy, in the suburbs of Paris. After her dalliance with German physicists, Emily was happy to be back in cosmopolitan Paris, nosing about its bookshops and cafes, and occasionally dropping by Gertrude Stein's famed "27" to see if there was anyone worth meeting.

On one of these jaunts, Emily was spotted by an old nemesis who was in town to undergo a daring surgical procedure pioneered by Dr. Serge Voronoff.

Voronoff had been surgically implanting testes from apes into humans since the early 1920s. He had recently opened a famous clinic in Paris where he was not only performing his tried-and-true gonad technique (made famous by the Australian poet, Micky Rugweed's (1) touching autoerotic elegy, "Thy Beauteous Shine on Yer Great Bloody Baboon Balls"), but where he was also surgically enhancing the copulatory tackle of gentlemen who had been short-changed by fate.

Certainly, there were few gents as spectacularly short-changed as was Lord Pustule Gorcharp ('Mimsy' to his friends). In 1920 Voronoff had implanted several organs from a chimp named Oooka into Gorcharp; they had completely revived Gorcharp's desire to engage in what he called "a little pencil-wagging". Unfortunately, after his run in with Penelope Fullalove (aka, Emily Chesley), he had very little pencil to wag.

So, he was in Paris to try the new technique, dubbed by nautch-girls around Rue Pigalle as "l'os pathetic de singe" (2); with any luck, the Vornoff technique would enhance his remaining un-masticated equipment with simian erectile tissue. And it was in Voronoff's waiting room later that afternoon where Gorcharp ran into an old pen-pal of his, Quentin Farkmee.

Gorcharp first knew of Farkmee from an epistle that nearly saw Emily convicted of sedition. The two gents met later that year in Ottawa; Farkmee was sitting as the MP for Middlesex and Gorcharp was attending the visit of the Prince of Wales (later George V) in 1908. In the intervening years, their correspondence had covered many topics, but mostly it shared their dislike of Emily's "kind". Since Gorcharp's 'pencilectomy' and Farkmee's electoral defeat in 1918 (for which he always blamed Chesley), their hatred was inflamed like Farkmee's gouty left foot.

The only other person in the waiting room was Toulouse Le Grandfig, an surrealist from Sarlat (though Grandfig always described himself as a dadaist, long after the movement was dead). The artist was there to see if Voronoff could graft a working tail on him -- that or maybe something rude that could be attached under his left armpit.

Le Grandfig listened intently as Gorcharp and Farkmee talked about their lives. Farkmee, who had travelled widely in his younger years, was exhibiting some of the later symptoms of syphilis, and was barking mad. Gorcharp was a member of the Peerage and was therefore, thoroughly corrupt. Le Grandfig wanted to have a monkey tail grafted to his ass. Clearly, no good could come from this mentally unstable triumvirate.

The conversation was at first desultory, except for Grandfig's persistent exclamations: "this is not a chair!" "I am not a surrealist!" "Dada is mada!" But the plot did begin on a quiet note. This exchange is reported by Grandfig in his surrealist autobiography and masterwork, "Ma batte est une cheminée." (3)

"You know," said Gorcharp, "with the Doctor's help I bet we could really do a number on that old bitch."

"What, Chesley?"

"Yeaas. How much do you think Voronoff would pay for a female subject willing to have the new procedure performed on her?"

"What. The monkey bone?" Gorcharp nodded sagely, and Farkmee barked madly in approval of the idea.

"Imagine how much she would hate to be turned into a man."

I was personally intrigued to see what a monkey phallus would look like on so shapely and curvaceous a figure as that of Emily Chesley. She was well known in Dadaist circles as "La chanteuse impaires des chansons" - the singer of odd songs - and we admired her greatly. A monkey phallus and perhaps a tail to match mine would make her a fine figure indeed.

It was then that the Minotaur came into the room and asked me to fill out forms. [excerpt ends]

But the plot was thwarted almost as soon as it began. Gendarmes broke into Voronoff's office, so that they could arrest him for the death of a young man who had recently had a sheep's spleen transplanted into his abdominal cavity. Voronoff, who was always ready for such intrusions, had installed a secret trap door in his operating room, and was on his way to Budapest before the police could even discover his that he was gone.

However, they did decide to arrest Gorcharp and Farkmee, just so that the afternoon wasn't a total loss. Farkmee was deported when they discovered he was suffering from syphillis - because they didn't need any more of that around in Paris in the 1920s - he died just a few years later. Gorcharp's arrest was forgotten for some time, and he emerged from French prison a year later, with a fondness for French lingerie that is a traditional weakness amongst England's ruling class.

Le Grandfig knew well enough not to be around during a bust, and scarpered as soon as "les flics" broke in.

But all of this was unnoticed by Emily, who was not reading the papers that week. The "Teenie-Weenie Plot", as Chesleyan scholars have come to call it, had no impact on her life, except perhaps, to keep both Farkmee and Gorcharp out of her vicinity for at least a few more years. (4) The plot had nothing to do with her work on The Grafters, though clearly both Farkmee and Gorcharp would have done well to read the book before allowing Voronoff to graft anything on them.

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

(1) A second cousin of the historian, Geoffrey Rugweed. [...back]

(2) Literally, the pathetic monkey bone. [...back]

(3)"My bat is a chimney" (Presse De Boue De Porcs, 1937). Ed. note: some of the surrealistic imagery has been removed from this excerpt, for the sake of coherence, clarity, and general sanity. [...back]

(4) Emily was to run into Gorcharp again in 1941, to nearly disastrous results. [...back]