Case Studies from The White Stocking 2: Sam Adams (A Lothario Who Makes Love to Music)

I.

In an essay written in 1927, Lawrence examines the idea that dancing is essentially a form of making love to music, or rhythmic fucking with a melodious accompaniment. He asserts that this is what many - perhaps most - modern people long to experience; particulary those women who wished that man was not such a coarse creature keen to copulate and have done as quickly as possible.

For such women - women who find great pleasure in flirting and sexual foreplay - ejaculation is always premature and the act of coition always a let down; not so much a consummation as a humiliating anti-climax. If their physical desire was to be satisfied anywhere, then it was in the ballroom - not in the bedroom - with a man who intimately knew his way round the dance floor.

Lawrence writes, mockingly: "They wanted heavenly strains to resound, while he held their hand, and a new musical movement to burst forth, as he put his arm round their waist." For sex can be very charming and very delightful, so long as it's sublimated in 3/4 time, like a waltz, and you can keep your clothes on.

All of which brings us to the fascinating case of Elsie Whiston and her dance partner-cum-illicit lover, Sam Adams, in Lawrence's short story 'The White Stocking' (1914) ...

II.

Sam Adams is a forty-year old bachelor with an eye for the ladies. In fact, his fondness for the girls employed in his lace factory - and, to be fair, their fondness for him - was notorious. And he was particularly taken with Elsie, whom he had once ravished on the dance floor at the firm's Christmas do, as she blissfully liked to recall, even though she was now married to another:

"That dance was an intoxication to her. After the first few steps, she felt herself slipping away from herself. She almost knew she was going, she did not even want to go. Yet she must have chosen to go. She lay in the arm of the steady, close man with whom she was dancing, and she seemed to swim away out of contact with the room, into him. She had passed into another, denser element of him, an essential privacy. The room was all vague around her, like an atmosphere, like under sea, with a flow of ghostly, dumb movements. But she herself was held real against her partner, and it seemed she was connected with him, as if the movements of his body and limbs were her own movements, yet not her own movements - and oh, delicious! He also was given up, oblivious, concentrated, into the dance. His eye was unseeing. Only his large, voluptuous body gave off a subtle activity. His fingers seemed to search into her flesh. Every moment, and every moment, she felt she would give way utterly, and sink molten: the fusion point was coming when she would fuse down into perfect unconsciousness at his feet and knees. But he bore her round the room in the dance, and he seemed to sustain all her body with his limbs, his body, and his warmth seemed to come closer into her, nearer, till it would fuse right through her, and she would be as liquid to him, as an intoxication only.
      It was exquisite. When it was over, she was dazed, and was scarcely breathing. She stood with him in the middle of the room as if she were alone in a remote place. He bent over her. She expected his lips on her bare shoulder, and waited. Yet they were not alone, they were not alone."

Indeed, not only were there other couples on the dance floor, but her soon-to-be husband, Ted, was in the next room playing crib and drinking coffee with the old ladies 'cos, as he informed Elsie, he wasn't made for the dance floor. And so, in a sense, he's a deserving cuckold; for, unlike the older man, "Whiston had not made himself real to her. He was only a heavy place in her consciousness."

That is to say, he embodies the spirit of gravity, whilst Adams allows her to float and fly and spin round the dance floor, and holds her in close physical contact, his limbs touching her limbs.

Adams is also first off the mark when Elsie (accidentally on purpose) takes out what she pretends to be her handkerchief and drops it on the floor, only to discover with mock-embarrassment it's actually something quite different:

"For a second it lay on the floor, a twist of white stocking. Then, in an instant, Adams picked it up, with a little, surprised laugh of triumph.
      'That’ll do for me,' he whispered - seeming to take possession of her. And he stuffed the stocking in his trousers pocket ..."

What Adams chooses to do with the stocking, we can only guess; perhaps he takes it home and tries it on - just as Paul Morel tries on the stockings belonging to Clara Dawes in a memorable scene in Sons and Lovers. Or perhaps he masturbates with his fetishistic trophy, before later returning it to Elsie in the post as a semen-stained Valentine's gift; sexually exciting her whilst further humiliating poor Teddy Whiston.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Love to Music', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 41-8.

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64. 

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking'). 

For the first of the White Stocking case studies - on Elsie Whiston as a prick tease with pearl earrings - click here.

For the third of the White Stocking case studies - on Ted Whiston as an abusive husband with a cuckold fetish - click here.