FOREWORD TO THE 2014 EDITION

I first met Lady Patricia Clarke Lupin Wildman, Duchess of Greystoke, in the summer of 2009, after the manuscript for The Evil in Pemberley House was finalized and submitted to the publisher, but before the first edition hardcover appeared in print from Subterranean Press.

The substance of that brief but pleasant encounter has been recounted in my foreword to The Scarlet Jaguar (Volume II of the Memoirs of Pat Wildman, Meteor House, 2013), with the exception that she spent no little time quizzing me regarding the accuracy of the Pemberley House manuscript. Not one to put on airs, Lady Patricia cared little that the novel delved into the inner workings of her psyche—or at least her psychosexual state as a teenager and young adult—shocking to some though they might be. (In psychoanalytical terms, her condition has been described as the “Electra complex.”) In fact, she insisted upon it. Similarly, she had no compunctions about the detail with which her sexual encounters were depicted and the revelations regarding her sexual orientation. She insisted that these were germane to the faithful telling of the tale.

Lady Patricia had related the disturbing events to Philip José Farmer via a series of correspondence in 1973, knowing of his reputation for dealing with taboo sexual matters honestly and frankly, and she fully expected him to capture the truthful essence of the events in his novelization of them.

That the novel had never been completed by Mr. Farmer and would now appear under our joint byline worried Lady Patricia. She admonished me that the tale should be related exactly as it happened, with nothing held back out of hypocritical regard for decorum or propriety.

I reassured her that Phil had had full oversight of the project, ever since I had discovered his partial manuscript, notes, and outline, in his basement in July 2005. The following year, Phil and Bette Farmer had authorized me to complete the novel, subject to their approval of chapters in progress, and to my faithful adherence to his outline.

The next summer, during an annual visit to Peoria, Illinois to visit Phil and Bette, we all had had a frank conversation regarding the explicit sex scenes in the manuscript. Phil had advocated for retaining the scenes, as integral to the tale and not gratuitous. Given that our plan called for preserving all of Phil’s already written prose, unaltered, and that this prose included some of the mature content, as well as his opinion regarding the necessity of this material to the reader’s understanding of the overall story, the decision was made to retain the sex scenes as he wrote them, as well as the ones described in his outline of the remainder of the novel.

As Farmer expert Christopher Paul Carey, who was also present for this uncomfortable conversation, has said, “I'll never forget the palpable tension in the room.”

Thus reassured that the manuscript retained fidelity to the events as they happened, Lady Patricia said she was looking forward to the printed book, which was due to be published in just a few months, and our conversation turned to the possibility of me recounting her further adventures, a prospect to which I happily agreed.

Lady Patricia also confirmed, as I suspected and some others have guessed, that she was the “anonymous benefactor” noted in the acknowledgments of this book, who in late 2006 sent me a photocopy of the exceedingly rare “The Shades of Pemberley,” from the January 1928 issue of The Saxon Blake Library ; this also confirmed her ongoing contact with Phil Farmer, and that he had informed her of my involvement in the Pemberley House manuscript very early on.

Before parting, I did pose a final question which, while perhaps trivial in the overall scheme of things, had been an itch that had needed scratching for quite some time: why, if the family surname was Clarke Wildman (despite the lack of a hyphen), had her parents called her Patricia Clarke Lupin Wildman?

Lady Patricia’s grin was dazzling. Her mother had insisted, British naming conventions be damned. Her father was American, her mother was French, and they’d name their daughter any way they—or she —damn well pleased.

Doc Wildman had, of course, acquiesced to his lovely and strong-willed wife—as he had in many matters, a fact which engendered in young Patricia Wildman no little jealousy of her mother, as will be seen as you read on.

—W.S.E.