Ninety years ago, a novella called Park: A Fantastic Story was printed by the Hague and Gill press. It was a beautiful book, printed on handmade grey paper in Eric Gill’s favourite Joanna italic type. But the story was more remarkable than the production.
In one sense, it is a fantasy, a kind of dream episode; in another it is an astonishing take on the relations between black people and white at the time it was written. It starts with the narrator, Mungo Park, walking in the Cotswolds when he hears a birdlike melody that accompanies his footsteps. He continues to walk and is felled by buckshot. He is brought to a hut by a man who seems to be a park keeper. He is black. He and Park communicate through Latin. The man asks him how he knows the language. “Sacra lingua est” (it is a sacred language), Park replies, for he is a priest.
