2005: Introduction
Fenella Vorpel
Several of my colleagues—well-intentioned, perpetually curious, and occasionally burdened by the kind of literalism that plagues modern academia—have commented on The Little Book of Fitzartur Foibles as a living demonstration of the family maxim that we shall never be entirely understood. “Why,” they ask, with that particular mixture of challenge and concern that passes for conversation in faculty lounges, “is the book so small?”
If, as claimed by its latest batch of editors, it represents the Family Bible that most households still insist on misquoting from, then surely, they argue, a work tracing the vast eccentricities of the Mallard and Fitzartur line should be monumental—a tome of unmanageable girth, one that requires both upper-body strength and emotional stamina to approach. A thousand pages at least! Preferably two, if there are illustrations of the more scandalous Mallards.
When I can be troubled to explain—and it depends heavily on the catering at the event in question—I point out that most sacred texts would be trimmed down to pamphlet size if one removed the repetitions, contradictions, and the occasional (if lengthy) mutterings of what can only be described as holy madmen. There are, as we know, two incompatible creation stories, a regular thirst for smiting, and enough self-satisfied genealogies to put a government census to shame.
If The Little Book of Fitzartur Foibles had followed that model, it would sprawl across volumes, replete with competing truths and several miraculous misprints. Instead, it is concise—a word I find far more admirable than “little.”
Now, the title itself has provoked almost as much comment as its length. Little, in this instance, bears the same classically ironic weight as Little John—that not-so-little forester from the Robin Hood fable whom we remember, with exaggerated affection, for his ox-like girth and occasional usefulness with a stick. The “little” in The Little Book of Fitzartur Foibles performs the same trick: it announces humility while practising hauteur. It whispers, pay no attention, while quietly arranging for posterity to do exactly that.
Of course, those of us unfortunate—or fortunate—enough to be descended from the Mallards know that understatement is our most effective form of spectacle. The book’s size belies its scale. Each of its stories unfurls with a certain calculated unhurriedness, revealing patterns, omissions, and insinuations that collectively enact a kind of narrative geology. To the inattentive reader, this can seem baffling or even dull. To the attentive one, the book expands—infinitely, almost indecently—under the pressure of meaning.
A longer book could never manage this; it would smother its own implications beneath weight and paper. But this small thing—trim, unyielding, audaciously brief—lays itself open like an experiment in self-revelation. It is the Fitzartur family, distilled: ambiguous, elusive, and refusing ever to end the conversation cleanly.
There is, to be frank, much in The Little Book that will confuse, intrigue, or actively dismay the casual reader. Those who expect a history will be disappointed; those who seek moral guidance will be bewildered; and those who expect coherence should seek another bloodline altogether. It is not meant for the masses—though we are, of course, flattered by your curiosity—but for those of us entangled in the Mallard inheritance: that strange combination of intellectual courage and emotional untidiness that seems to repeat itself, undiluted, across the centuries.
I sometimes compare the book to a family photograph taken before anyone had learned to smile properly. Everyone looks at once important and faintly alarmed. The attentive observer senses that the moment before the shot was not entirely harmonious. That is the enduring charm of our chronicle.
And inevitably, before I can elaborate, I find my interrogator has already wandered off—usually to refill a glass or, more dramatically, to fall asleep mid-discourse. A pity, really. They might have discovered that the littleness of The Little Book of Fitzartur Foibles is not a defect but a design: an act of compression worthy of any philosopher, poet, or pedant who has ever sought to contain the vast within the trivial.
But then, I’ve never trusted those who prefer long books to deep ones.
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