Introduction to
ELOUISE AND THE DOCTORS OF THE PLANET PERGAMON

As I have never met Josephine Saxton, author of the most remarkable story that follows, I can only report that she is agented (skillfully) by Ms. Virginia Kidd, to date she has had two books published (The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith [Doubleday, 1969] and a collection, Vector for Seven [Doubleday, 1970]), and she is one of the most chillingly original writers I've ever read. I would tell you more, but I think Ms./Mr. Saxton (you'll understand my confusion momentarily) can say all that need be said of her/himself on her/his own. You see, I have at hand 4 count 'em 4 introductions. Also 4 Afterwords. I've become prudent in my declining years, and so, without further to-do, here is The Five Foot Shelf of Saxton Introductions.

1 Josephine Saxton is really a man who asks us not to publish his real name. He took this nom-de-plume in order to get published in what he describes as "this Age of The Great Mother." The few details we can publish reveal that he keeps a grocery store, plays bowls at the weekends and is married with a teenage daughter who plans to be a secretary. He has done no other kind of work, having inherited the store, and goes to Blackpool for his holidays every year. His novel The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith came out in August '69 from Doubleday, to be followed soon by The Weltanschauung of Mrs. Amelia Mortimer and Friends. He says he does not know where he gets his ideas from, they just come to him, as he weighs out dry goods.

2 Josephine Saxton is the Grandma Moses of the new writers, having just celebrated her 77th birthday. She has been married nine times and has fifteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She has finally given up the idea of Marriage As A Way Of Life and has taken vows in the monastery of Kali-Lung-Gompoo in Tibetan Turkestan where she writes novels and stories in between meditating. She began writing only four years ago to fill in the winter evenings and to prevent herself from becoming a cabbage. She describes herself as "phenomenally ugly—four feet six inches in my naked bunions, bald as a melon—and I didn't get my figure back after the twins, which were the tenth." She writes to us with fascinating hints of developing powers under her Teacher at the monastery, things like seeing life on other planets, killing yaks ten miles away by a thought and levitation.

Her favourite food is tsampa and her only ambition now is to get herself off the cycle of birth and rebirth.

She sends a special blessing to all her readers, and has written out a special ticket for them to attach to her prayer wheel.

3 Josephine Saxton is thirty-four and married to a genius painter and has three children, one boy is going to be a TV comic, the second boy a poet and drag-stripper, and the girl a prima donna ballerina. She has done many of the things one reads of writers except travel, but this will be rectified in due course, a good start having been made with the trip to the States in August 1969. She is a native of Halifax in Yorkshire and identifies with Emily Bronte ever since visiting Haworth parsonage and feeling haunted at the age of thirteen. She bakes her own bread and likes eating honey and slices of raw lemon. She likes watching vegetables grow, lace curtains, and brochures for new electric cookers. She has a shocking past, a blissful present and a dark future full of dreams.

She had no higher education to speak of, and is very grateful for same; it has left her free to prefer Jung to Freud for one thing.

She is the kind of person who plants a few rose bushes, but arranges them in a symbolic pattern so they will grow well.

4 Josephine Saxton.

Date of birth 11th June 1935. Born in Halifax Yorkshire, one of the last two towns to abolish the gibbet, and the town with the highest suicide rate in Great Britain, built in a hollow of the Pennines amidst wild moors, neighbouring Bronte country. Left school at age sixteen having arranged to meet my schoolfriends at age twenty-one, to celebrate my first book. Became: a solicitor's clerk; an inspector of woollen socks; a cashdesk assistant in a delicatessen; and then the cook and fish-filleter with the same firm. Then a brewer's clerk, learning to drink half a pint of undiluted rum with my morning coffee at age seventeen, unaccountably having a nervous breakdown, left to go and chalk-mark round patterns in a clothing factory whilst painting scenery for repertory at night. Went to another brewery, most Dickensian, sitting on high stool and bearing the brunt of wit of the sour old clerks; nothing to drink for juniors there. Spent a winter at the seaside being a chambermaid and reading Aleister Crowley, was followed everywhere by a baldheaded man with a hatchet, one kitchen porter. (I am not being facetious, just irrelevant.) Then I did eighteen months in Halifax Art School, got my exams and had a row about dirty paint brushes and next day had become a bus conductress with a studio, which lasted for a year. I then married a painter, having had a spell as an artist's model at a rival art school, whilst trying to get further exams at night. Settled down in a cottage on a moor, wrote a play in between feeding the baby, and then "A Taste of Honey" came out, almost word for word what I had just written. Alas! Fell in love with an old friend and ran away with him one night and settled in a seventeenth century mansion and had two more babies, wrote some stories. Set up as a machine embroiderer, sold a few, decided it wasn't me.

I have omitted many other jobs: tailoress, shop assistant, lavatory cleaner in a cinema, mill-hand. I also got but did not pursue a job as cook in a Scottish Castle. Moved to Leicester because of Colin's job (he is a painter and lectures in Fine Art) and found myself in a battery of breeding huts known as suburban dwelling-houses. Still here but my endurance is running out. One day I said:

"I will write a novel;" and did so, but it wasn't much good, wrote another, then the third, which was published by Doubleday, followed by my fourth novel. So, fifteen years later than I thought, I have done what I wanted to do on leaving school. Things are going on from there, writing is it.

Interests.

All branches of psychology, favouring C. G. Jung.

All religions, favouring Eastern philosophies.

Cooking, sewing, gardening. Reading anything, biology, science, novels, anything.

Occultism and esoterica, collecting books on these subjects. Favourite authors include Patrick White, Iris Murdoch, C. F. Keppler, A. S. Byatt, Thomas Hinde, Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis. Hero figure is William Blake.

Recreations: Sunbathing, swimming, walking, being on mountains, by lakes, on cliffs. Never watch TV and hardly go to the cinema. Love dancing and music, especially Indian music and Messiaen and some pop. Never experimented with drugs and no longer like being drunk but enjoy parties, and entertaining.

Aspirations: To write better and more, to travel and find somewhere congenial to live in a warm climate where there are friendly natives.

To write good poetry. I have written stacks but I am too garrulous to be a good poet . . .