Showing posts with label henry james. Show all posts
Showing posts with label henry james. Show all posts

16 Aug 2023

Virginia and the Duckworth Boys

 
"Nothing has really happened until it has been described ..."
 
 
I.
 
I have to admit, until very recently my knowledge of Gerald Duckworth was extremely limited. Essentially, I knew he published some of D. H. Lawrence's early work, including Sons and Lovers (1913), and that Lawrence thought him a decent chap. 
 
But I didn't know that Duckworth also published books by Henry James and John Galsworthy. Nor did I know that his middle name - de l'Etang - was the surname of one of his mother's ancestors, Antoine de l'Etang, a page to Marie Antoinette; or that he died whilst on holiday in Milan, in 1937.
 
And I certainly didn't know that Gerald was accused by his much younger half-sister, Virginia, of molesting her as a child; a claim that Woolf first made in a speech at the Bloomsbury Memoir Club in 1920 and which has long been the subject of controversy within literary and feminist circles [1].
 
According to Woolf, Gerald physically picked her up one day, plonked her onto a table, put his hand under her skirt, and then proceeded to fondle her genitals. To Virginia - who was only six years old at the time - this was a shocking incident; one which she never forgot, even if she forgave Gerald and did not accuse him of any further violations (or indiscretions, as commentators who wish to trivialise this incident prefer to write).  
 
Woolf provides a graphic description of what happened in a posthumously published piece of autobiographical writing: 
 
"As I sat there he began to explore my body. I can remember the feel of his hand going under my clothes; going firmly and steadily lower and lower, I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled as his hand approached my private parts. But it did not stop. His hand explored my private parts too." [2]  
 
Of course, it may well be that Gerald regarded his younger sister more as an object of sexual curiosity, rather than sexual desire. And doubtless such things as this are common in family homes up and down the land. But, even so - perhaps due to the twelve-year age difference between the two parties - this incident makes for uncomfortable reading and it was certainly one that deeply affected Woolf.
 
Indeed, those far more knowledgeable about the impact of childhood sexual abuse than I argue that even a single incident such as this can have such powerful long-term consequences that it's impossible to fully understand Woolf's later life, as a woman and as an artist, without acknowledging what happened to her as a child at the hands of Gerald - and, indeed, his elder brother George, who was (allegedly) a far more serious sex pest ...
 
 
II. 
 
According to Woolf, she and her sister were repeatedly abused over a period of many years by their half-brother George Duckworth. This abuse began when she was aged thirteen; Vanessa sixteen; and George twenty-eight. 
 
Virginia would write of his violent passion and brutish behaviour and the implication was given that he had attempted to establish an incestuous relationship with her and Vanessa (although neither Woolf nor Bell ever accused him of rape, as such). 
 
In '22 Hyde Park', she discloses how, one night, as she lay undressed and stretched out on her bed trying to sleep, George came creeping into her room. When she sat up and cried out he instructed her not to be frightened - and not to turn on the lights. Then, according to Woolf, George flung himself on the bed beside her and took her in his arms [3].  
 
For George Duckworth's defenders, these allegations are not only unproven, but unfounded; some even describe them as far-fetched and suggest that Woolf concocted an imaginative drama out of little more than erotic horseplay, which, whilst not entirely innocent, was neither something to make a fuss about.
 
Ultimately, we have no way of knowing the truth of what happened: but I doubt very much that Woolf invented or fantasised the abuse. On the other hand, however, it's probably wise to retain a degree of skepticism concerning claims that are made without any supporting evidence (particularly claims made by imaginative artists who are often unreliable narrators of their own lives and prone to embroider actual events).   
 
 
Notes
 
[1] Although many Woolf scholars today don't question whether the abuse happened, disagreement persists about the nature and extent of the abuse and what effect it may have had on the rest of her life. I think we can agree, however, that Woolf's speaking out on this subject was a courageous and highly unusal thing for a woman at that time to do.
      
[2] Quoted from Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, ed. by Jeanne Schulkind, (Sussex University Press, 1976). 
      This collection of posthumously-published autobiographical essays was first discovered in the papers of her husband, Leonard Woolf, and used by Quentin Bell in his biography of his aunt Virginia, published in 1972. In 1976, the essays were edited for publication by Jeanne Schulkind; a revised and enlarged second edition was published by the Hogarth Press in 1985; the most recent edition, introduced and revised by Hermione Lee, was published by Pimlico in 2022.   
      The title was a phrase used by Woolf to describe those rare moments (not necessarily positive or beneficial) in which an individual directly experiences reality, in contrast to the states of non-being which separate us from reality or serve to protect us from its tragic (or traumatic) nature. Arguably, an incident that scars the individual for life - such as a sexual assault in childhood - might be construed as just such a moment. 
 
[3] This essay, '22 Hyde Park', can be found in Moments of Being, op cit.
 
 
Readers interested in learning more about this topic will find the following essay by Lucia Williams helpful: 'Virginia Woolf's History of Sexual Victimization: A Case Study in Light of Current Research', Psychology, Vol. 5, No. 10, (August 2014), pp. 1151-1164. Click here to read online.  
 



14 Aug 2017

Taking Civilisation to the Barbarians

Two Irish poets pictured whilst on tour in America: 
Oscar Wilde (1882) and Johnny Rotten (1978) 


When the Sex Pistols set off on their ill-fated American tour in January 1978, manager Malcolm McLaren had determined that the band would avoid playing major venues in New York and Los Angeles in front of audiences likely to be receptive and would, instead, head to the Deep South and perform in front of hostile rednecks in cities including Atlanta, Memphis, San Antonio, Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Tulsa.

For Malcolm wasn't interested in building a new fan base, or simply increasing record sales; he wanted, rather, to cultivate hatred, incite conflict, and cause as much chaos as possible amongst the barbarians who invented rock 'n' roll: "The idea was to get lost in the swamps and the badlands, making it impossible for the myth of the Sex Pistols to be exposed", as he puts it in the Swindle. 

Of course, any one familiar with the above film or the history of the band, will probably know this already. But what fans might not know is how this idea - often mistakenly said to be ill-conceived - was inspired by Malcolm's love for Oscar Wilde, who in 1882 went on his own (far more extensive, far more profitable) US tour that also brought him into amusingly close contact with some of the colourful locals, including farmers, miners, and gun-toting cowboys.

For despite his pretensions and poses, there was nothing snobbish about Wilde and he took great delight in meeting such people and not just fellow authors, such as Henry James and Walt Whitman. Indeed, one of Wilde's most interesting trips was to a mining town, high up in the Rocky Mountains, called Leadville, the story of which Malcolm was fond of retelling ...

Back in 1882, Leadville was a genuine Wild West town of some 30,000 inhabitants; most of whom had recently arrived and all of whom were hoping to strike it rich following the discovery of thick veins of silver in them thar hills. Strangely, however, as well as the customary saloon and whorehouse, Leadville had (and still has) its own opera house and it was here that Wilde was booked to speak - dressed, according to contemporary accounts, in a purple smoking jacket, knee breeches and black silk stockings.    

His chosen topic for the evening: The Practical Application of the Aesthetic Theory to Exterior and Interior House Decoration with Observations on Dress and Personal Ornament. Unsurprisingly, the talk didn't go down very well. Depending on which account you choose to believe, either the audience eventually fell asleep or Wilde was pushed off stage into the orchestra pit.

Either way, Wilde himself was much amused when, after reading passages from the autobiography of the great Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini, the miners expressed their disappointment that the latter wasn't going to be making an appearance: "I explained that he had been dead for some little time which elicited the enquiry 'Who shot him?'"

Like the Sex Pistols, Wilde liked to meet and mingle with his audience afterwards. When it was discovered that he was a man who not only liked but could handle his liquor - he manfully drank all of those who jeered at him for being a sissy under the table - Wilde became an instant hero in the town and the next day it was agreed to name a new silver vein in his honour.

This apparently involved a ceremony in which Wilde was lowered to the bottom of a mine in a bucket, where he proceeded to eat a meal and smoke a cigar. "I had hoped that in their simple grand way they would have offered me shares in [the lode], but in their artless untutored fashion they did not."

Upon returning to the surface, Wilde and his new pals retired once more to the saloon where he saw what he described as "the only rational method of art criticism" he'd ever come across; over the piano there hung a notice reading: Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

"I was struck", says Wilde, "with this recognition of the fact that bad art merits the penalty of death, and I felt that in this remote city, where the aesthetic applications of the revolver were clearly established in the case of music, my apostolic task would be much simplified ..."

Whether there's anything Wildean about the Sex Pistols is debatable. But there's certainly something punk rock about Oscar and his sexy, stylish, subversive aesthetic.  


Notes 

Photo of Oscar Wilde, by Napoleon Sarony (New York City, Jan. 1882).

Photo of Johnny Rotten, lead singer with the Sex Pistols, by Roberta Bayley (San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1978).

To find out more about Wilde's American adventures, click here

To watch the Sex Pistols perform their song New York at Randy's Rodeo, in San Antonio, Texas, (8 Jan. 1978), click here

This gig is notorious for the fact that Sid Vicious hits a member of the audience over the head with his bass guitar. 

For a sister post that provides a kind of PS to this one and refers to the case of Sebastian Horsley, click here.   


28 Jan 2016

On Reading between the Lines

Smart Women Read between the Lines: A Reader's Journal
by Julie Hellwich and Haley Johnson, (Chronicle Books, 2007)


A friend writes to say how much she enjoyed a recent post, but then adds that in order to understand it fully she was obliged to read between the lines - a skill which, apparently, smart women everywhere are highly accomplished in, but a notion which I find problematic.

For whilst I might be persuaded that the silence and purity of the blank page is the very space of literature and would certainly concede that all good writing has a symbolic aspect in which meaning is often wilfully disguised via the use of rhetorical techniques such as irony and insinuation, I’m nevertheless wary of those crypto-theologians who insist that the truth of each and every text is always concealed beneath the words themselves (esoterically addressed to that discerning reader who has managed to divine authorial intent).

And, ultimately, I worry that, in reading between the lines and searching for an invisible logic, Miss Sherwood is simply taking what Henry James identified as the easier option. In other words, sometimes the careful analysis of what is actually written on the page is harder than the hermeneutic interpretation of the void between words, or the imaginative exploration of subliminal depths.