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These days Humbert J. Lewes would have no chance of fame. But in the 30s he was all the rage. His forté, all he did in fact, was descriptions of snow. Short factual sketches, medium-length portraits of snowy scenes, long and overpoweringly purply descriptions of snow in all its manifestations: as it fell, as it froze, as it melted, as it 'whitened the side of a tabby cat dead in a ball in a forest glade'.
His only book, Snow, 500 pages of it, was a best-seller, especially at Christmas time, in the years leading up to the war.
He was killed in the Blitz. I have this morning given the last rites to one of the brave firemen who attempted to save his life by pulling him from the rubble.
From the man's confession it seems certain that Humbert J. Lewes was not a human being at all. Under a thin layer of skin was a spiky blue leather underskin. The fireman and his colleagues thought this spiky blueness was caused by some chemical in the bomb. But when they saw his face, its humanity burned off to reveal blue unearthly features, they were sure what he was. They dragged the body to the nearest fire and flung it in, never to speak a word about it again, even to each other.
It occured to me, why I know not, that Humbert J. Lewes' descriptions of snow, so popular in the 30s, were not descriptions of our snow, but snow on the planet from where he originally came. I searched the late Father Connelly's tea chests and found a mildewed copy of Snow. When you read it with my idea in mind, it couldn't be more obvious.
He is forever saying things like: 'the stray snowflake turning through the snowless night, hoping to fall among unidentical brothers'. An obvious reference to his arrival here.
My favourite passage is a reverie about the shadows on some snow dunes: '...The moving sun rolls up curved shapes to leave perfect whiteness. But it cannot be believed that they have ceased to exist. - They are with others in a vast secret igloo, a collection of half-imagined magic carpets with nowhere to fly to. Is this where, through a blizzard of blue, snowmen will come enquiring of their souls?'.
This passage, I am sure, had a personal significance for him, but only the Good Lord knows what.
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