Acephalous

Thought-in-Process: Wharton's "The Descent of Man," Part I

Indicative of my current juvenile acuity: while reading a discussion of male homosexuality in Victorian culture I laughed aloud when I encountered the name of the person whose work had been cited: Dr. Harry Cocks. I initially thought it a prank of some sort, but as you can see from the link, that's the man's name.  His work seems high quality, but when I read his name, I snorted like a seventh grader.  (For which I apologize.)  Needless to say, I'm not in an intellectual place today.  So, I'm borrowing a page from my friend Wally's book and begin this post by saying:

No idea where this is going. 

You've Come a Long Way Not Really Changed at All, Baby

The recent surge in articles bemoaning the "death of privacy" is neither recent nor a surge.  Every technological advance has been accompanied by vehement complaints to the effect that "the world has been let in." 

Television, you remember, was once an intrusion of the world rather than an escape from it.  The telephone?  Can't have those switchboard operators working the night through.  What if some stranger rang at 3 a.m.? 

Those houses without hallways?  Clearly a sign of "the indifference to privacy which has sprung up in modern times."  A house should be constructed as a series of suites, each connected to the main hallway by another hallway.  Better yet, that second hallway shouldn't connect to the main, but to an antechamber branching off it, so as to assure "greater privacy." 

You know, I've seen Edith Wharton's dream home.  I'm quite sure I wouldn't want to live there.

The Decoration of Hou—

There must be a better online version of Wharton's The Decoration of Houses than the one I just linked to.  I have a difficult time dealing with interfaces seemingly designed to frustrate both the subject doing the interfacing and the object being interfaced.  I can barely read it, and half the time I turn a page, the next one never loads.  It seems both Scott and the Server are unhappy. 

I'm this close to moving on entirely, despite the fact that the discussions of "conditions" and "conditioning" in the book seem perfectly geared to my topic.  Does the book not know I only have nine days to finish this chapter?  Does it not realize that I'm only futzing with it because the copy I interlibrary-loaned four weeks ago still hasn't arrived?  Does it not care?

Finally, a Reason to Criticize Hermione Lee

On page 69, we learn:

[Egerton Winthrop] was the third wheel of the Wharton marriage for many years, and one of her most important intellectual advisers.

Edith married Teddy Wharton in 1885.  How to explain this, then, from page 127:

For a few years in the early 1890s ... [Ogden Codman] was a third wheel to the marriage.

That's four wheels, people.  That car/carriage/car is raring to roll.  So much for Lee's damn near-perfect work of scholarship.  But blooped or smoked, a hit's a hit. 

Note to Self: Remain on Henry James' Good Side

James' description of "Vernon Lee" (Violet Paget), as transcribed by Edith Wharton:

The long lean face of a starved horse, large and intelligent eyes not wholly devoid of obliquity, a flabby pendulous nose covered with cutaneous scabs, an underhung jaw revealing a dental display of really deplorable character, and on her head, my dear boy, from nine to thirteen hairs.

Have I plugged the Lee biography enough yet? 

Pennies from Heaven, Fall into My Lap

When I set my new chapter-per-month schedule, I knew I'd socialize less, sleep less, watch less television—but I also knew I'd be unable to produce quality work without some dumb luck.  No researching for months and months before finding the best quotation in the history of everything; I'd need critical evidence self-glomerating into compelling arguments at breakneck speed.  You can understand, then, why I'm demoralized by my discovery of the isolation of New York "society" from American society at large.*  You can also understand why I'm elated that Edith Wharton underlined the following passage in Haeckel's The History of Creation:

Individuals can transmit, not only those qualities which they themselves have inherited from their ancestors, but also the peculiar, individual qualities which they have acquired in their own life.

Now, underscoring is no more of an endorsement than, say, linking, but it means establishing her familiarity with the neo-Lamarckian strain of evolutionary thought will be a cinch.  All I need do now is determine where she stands on these issues, and I'll be set.  I'll have this thing done in no time flat.  Already half-finished, it will be, sometime soon, I hope.

*The upper reaches barely even considered themselves American.  Wharton wrote of her friends, "we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass house."  The emphasis on "we" and use of the phrase "the Americans" point to future difficulties in establishing her take on social evolution, but as that milk's yet to be spilled, I'll save my tears for now.

Some Names I Understand, But...

Following on the heels of yesterday's inquiry:

Almost all these young Americans gave each other pet names or short names.  Edith was "Lily," and sometimes "John," as well as Puss or Pussy. (60)

"Lily" and "Pussy" I understand, but "John"?  Why would she have been nicknamed "John"?  This hammers home something I've thought since I started working on Wharton: the rich really are different.  I know nothing about their society, and the research I've done on American culture in Wharton's time (as well as the moments she represents in her novels) bears little to no relation to the culture of the circles in which she moved. 

For example: I have absolutely no idea why every wealthy family in New York aired out their mansions on 15 October.  Not a clue.  This type of what Wharton will call "tribal" behavior pertains to a tribe about which I know nothing. 

Another example: Ward McAllister.  Seems like I should've run across the name before—and I probably have, but so removed are he and his from the concerns I've been researching, the name never stuck.  As for who McAllister was, this note on him from The Musical Times (1 November 1894) captures him nicely:

A case of give and take!  My. Ward McAllister, autocrat of New York "society": "I like Wagner in a good box at the Opera in New York or Paris, with a house brilliantly lighted up and full of handsome women in opera dress, where one can while away Wagner's long and stupid recitals by whispering pleasant things to charming women."

Paging Dr. Freud

"Making up" was the most essential activity of Pussy Jones' childhood:

"Making up" began for her when [she] was four or five, and the family had just moved to Europe.  She had begun inventing stories before then—from the moment she could remember, in fact—but now she "found the necessary formula."  The "formula" is described very precisely: it was ritualistic, solitary and very physical.  She had to have a book in her hands, preferably with lots of thick black type, and she would walk rapidly up and down in an "ecstasy" of invention, turning the pages as if reading, regardless of whether the book was upside down or not, and improvising out loud, and very fast, an imaginary story ... Her account of "the ecstasy which transported my little body" is extremely erotic: there is evidently something masturbatory and orgasmic about these "enraptured sessions."

When Pussy Jones* writes of "making up" in her unpublished novel Literature, she does so through the character of a young boy who, of course, she christens "Dick Thaxter."  Names are important.  Lacan said so.  To relate something I wrote back before you read me—when I thought differently about psychoanalysis, and a mere two days after I announced the arrival of a fantastic new blog—a Lacanian with whom I briefly shared an office once told me:

Lacan thought seriously about names and their effect on development.  I don't see anything wrong with teaching a lesson in a freshman composition class on how Richard Caputo's politics derive from the fact that he is, nominally and probably actually too, a "dick head."

In light of this, I can only conclude that Pussy rewriting her masturbatory "make up" sessions as a Dick extremely significant.  Would that I knew how.