Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's an Angel! It's Barbette!

Vander Clyde (c.1899-1973) aka Barbette

Photo by Man Ray (1925) / Poster by Charles Gesmar (1926)

Where there is loveliness of appearance, then there is no fraudulence ...

  

I.

 

Once upon a time, a young boy in Texas, named Vander, made a fateful visit to the circus and instantly decided that he wanted the life of a performer. Thinking he might make a good high-wire walker, Vander spent many hours practicing at home on his mother's steel clothes line. 

 

After graduating high school, aged 14, Vander began his circus career as one-half of a famous aerialist team called The Alfaretta Sisters. The fact that he was male wasn't deemed a problem, as he was happy to dress as a girl, agreeing with his new female partner that audiences preferred to watch women in colourful and elaborate costumes perform dangerous acrobatic stunts, rather than men in plain leotards [1].    

 

After he had devised a solo act, however, Vander decided to go it alone and exchange the world of circus for vaudeville, working under the mononym Barbette, which he thought had a mysterious French ring and certain neutrality to it. 

 

 

II. 

 

Barbette made her debut at the Harlem Opera House in 1919. After performing in full drag and maintaining the illusion of femininity until the end of the act, Vander would then pull off his wig and strike exaggerated masculine poses (as if only playing the part of a man) to the (shocked) amusement of the crowd [2]. 

 

After several years on the vaudeville circuit, Barbette made her European debut in 1923. Initially performing in London, it was Paris where, like many American artists belonging to the so-called lost generation [3], Barbette was truly to find herself, appearing at venues including the Casino de Paris, the Moulin Rouge, and the Folies Bergère. She was soon the talk of the town.   

Unfortunately, on a return visit to London, Vander was caught in flagrante delicto with another man. This resulted in the Palladium cancelling his contract and in Barbette being unable to work in England ever again. However, her adoring fans and famous admirers across the Channel simply shrugged in a typically Gallic manner when hearing of the incident.   

 

 

III. 

 

One of these admirers was the avant garde artist Jean Cocteau, who, by his own admission, was completely captivated by Barbette, whom he described as a queer combination of actor, angel, and bird: No mere acrobat, but one of the most beautiful theatrical performers alive today, whose artistry is comparable with that of Nijinsky. 

 

In fact, so impressed was Cocteau with Barbette's astonishing ability to slide back and forth between man and woman - thereby revealing the fluid and performative aspect of gender - that he wrote a seminal essay on her in 1926, in which he beseeched his fellow artists to learn from Barbette if they wished to understand the true nature of artifice [4].

 

To illustrate the essay, Cocteau commissioned a series of photographs by Man Ray - another American in Paris - which captured not only aspects of Barbette's performance, but also the pre-show process of gender transformation. Cocteau also cast Barbette in his experimental first film Le sang d'un poète (1930), where she appears dressed in Chanel. [5]

 

 

IV.

 

Sadly, all glittering careers must come to an end and a combination of age, injury, and illness obliged Barbette to bring down the curtain on her life as a performer at the close of the 1930s. 

 

Happily, however, a new life opened up as an artistic director at various circuses and Vander also worked as a consultant on a number of Hollywood films, including Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), where he coached Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon on the art of drag [6]. 

 

In his final months, Vander ended up living back in Texas, with his sister. Having been in often severe pain for many years, he committed suicide (by overdose) in 1973. In an interview with Francis Steegmuller four years prior to his death, Vander explained his thinking behind the character of Barbette:

 

"I’d always read a lot of Shakespeare […] and thinking that those marvelous heroines of his were played by men and boys made me feel that I could turn my specialty into something unique. I wanted an act that would be a thing of beauty - of course it would have to be a strange beauty." [7]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although Barbette entered the circus ring or, later the theatre stage, dressed like a showgirl, she would obviously remove her headdress, cape and gown, before taking to the high wire and trapeze. 

 

[2] As Chase Dimock notes:

      

"Barbette does not simply reveal his male identity and return to his true self, instead, he pantomimes and performs the masculinity supposedly revealed by removing his wig. His male sexed body and its expected postures and actions are revealed to be as much a product of artifice and performance as the female persona he adopts on stage."

 

The thing that is most interesting is that even after the big reveal and Barbette rebecomes Vander, s/he still retains their allure as an object of desire. Dimock interprets this in Kantian terms:

 

"While Barbette initially lures the desire of those drawn in by his pleasing make up and costuming, he is still able to retain the beauty of femininity after removing these items. Therefore, the attraction of Barbette is deeper than the pleasing veneer of femininity that he wears; it comes from an attraction to the pure form of beauty that he realizes through his acrobatic stunts and graceful movements. If Barbette could sustain his feminine form after all of the socially constructed signifiers of femininity had been stripped from his body, then it stands that Barbette had discovered some universally attractive structure of beauty that kindles desire irrespective of gender constructs." 

 

See Dimock's excellent essay; 'The Surreal Sex of Beauty: Jean Cocteau and Man Ray’s "Le Numéro Barbette"' (2 June 2011), in the As It Ought to Be archive: click here.   

 

[3] Gertrude Stein is usually credited with coining the term Lost Generation to refer to a group of American expatriate writers and artists drifting round the capitals of Europe during the 1920s. It was popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. 

 

[4] Jean Cocteau's 1926 essay on the nature and artifice of the theatre was originally published in Nouvelle Revue Française. It can be found alongside Man Ray's photographs and a New Yorker profile of Barbette written by Francis Steegmuller (see note 6 below), in the book Le Numéro Barbette, (Jacques Damase, 1989).

 

[5] Barbette also inspired the characterization of "Death" in Cocteau's later film Orphée (1950). Clearly, Cocteau was in love with Barbette, though whether they consummated their brief affair I don't know.   

    

[6] For a recent post on Some Like It Hot - in which I compare the drag performance of Curtis and Lemmon with that of Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey in Carry on Constable (1960), click here.

 

[7] Vander Barbette, quoted by Francis Steegmuller in 'An Angel, A Flower, A Bird', The New Yorker (20 Sept 1969): click here to read online.

 

 

In Praise of Notes and Parenthetical Elements (A Reply to a Critic)

A gargoyle checking footnotes

 

 

A critic writes:

One of the most irritating things about your blog is the use of endnotes. 

      One might question whether such are really needed at all in what is essentially an informal and non-academic forum, but since you seem determined to provide additional information, thereby supplementing your main text, you might at least try to keep them as brief as possible and not attempt to write a post within a post; as you do, for example, in the note on Barbette in 'Carry On Cross-Dressing' (9 April 2022). 

      It's fine to mention that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon were coached in the art of drag by Barbette, since you were discussing Some Like It Hot, but you needn't then discuss Jean Cocteau's relationship with the latter. This seems to suggest distraction on your part - as if you suddenly become bored with your own post and wish to head off in a new direction - and it's disconcerting too for readers to suddenly be taken off-topic. 

      If I were you, I would rework the format of your blog and consider eliminating notes altogether.

         

My reply: 

 

As a provocateur, it pleases me to think there are irritating aspects to Torpedo the Ark and that it doesn't simply soothe or pacify its audience. The pleasure of the text in its most radical sense - what Barthes terms jouissance - ultimately relies upon the reader's discomfort [1].      

As a post-Derridean, i.e., one who happily inhabits the margins of philosophy, I am favourably disposed towards footnotes, endnotes, and parenthetical elements, and prioritise fragmented forms, literary digressions, and the seemingly trivial detail (in which the devil hides) over conceptual coherence, etc. [2]

 

I regard the notes, therefore, as more than merely supplementary - they are not just afterthoughts, or add-ons, which serve to complete or enhance the main text; the notes have interest and import in their own right and function more like gargoyles on the side of a cathedral, jeering at the idea of wholeness (as if any post could ever be the last word on anything) [3]. 

 

The endnotes, as a type of birdsong, provide a way out of even my own arguments. I want to digress (to step aside or walk away from the straight and narrow); I like to be distracted (to have my thoughts pulled in a different direction, my attention diverted). If you find this disconcerting, then that's good; see my remarks above about jouissance. 

 

And so, I won't be changing the format of posts on Torpedo the Ark; a blog which might even be characterised (à la Whitehead) as ultimately nothing but a footnote to Nietzsche.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller, (Basil Blackwell, 1990). And see my discussion of this work in Postmodern Approaches to Literature 3: click here. 

[2] See Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass, (The University of Chicago Press, 1982). 

      See also Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), particularly the reading of Rousseau, in which Derrida demonstrates how there is no transparently pure language awaiting corruption by an external supplement that is entirely alien to it. 

 

[3] See D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow, ed. Mark Kinkead-Weekes, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 188-191. I discuss Lawrence's gargoyle philosophy in several posts, including 'Believe in the Ruins' (16 April 2019): click here. 

 

 

Further reading:  

 

Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History, (Harvard University Press, 1999). 

Chuck Zerby, The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes (Touchstone, 2003). 

 

See also Pat Thomson's post 'a little fluff on the footnote' (9 May 2016) on her blog, Patter, click here. 

Carry on Cross Dressing

 

Top: Tony Curtis as Josephine and Jack Lemmon as Daphne in Some Like It Hot (1959)

Bottom: Kenneth Williams as Ethel and Charles Hawtrey as Agatha in Carry on Constable (1960)

 

 

I. 

 

For lovers of film and for lovers of drag, Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, is perhaps as good as it gets.

 

And indeed, there's certainly a lot to admire about it, including the performances of Curtis and Lemmon as the two jazz musicians, Joe and Jerry, who go on the run - disguised as women - after witnessing a gangland murder. They could have played the roles of Josephine and Daphne simply for laughs, but instead they invest their acting talent in creating an illusion of womanhood that is convincing as well as comic [1]. 

 

Perhaps that's why although the Curtis and Lemmon characters of Joe and Jerry are portrayed as red-blooded (heterosexual) males, whose decision to wear female clothing is a sign of their desperation rather than perversity, Some Like It Hot was produced without approval from the censor-morons who enforced the Hays Code and feared the slightest hint of queerness. 

 

Or perhaps they just found Marilyn Monroe's character of Sugar Kane too hot to handle ... [2]

 

 

II.

As good as Curtis and Lemmon are in Some Like It Hot - and as loveable as we may find Josephine and Daphne - they are not, in my view, as good (or as loveable) as Ethel and Agatha, as played by Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey in Carry On Constable (1960) ...

Directed by Gerald Thomas, Carry On Constable is the fourth in the series of Carry On films and contains many of my favourite actors, scenes, and lines of dialogue - including the scene in which Charles Hawtrey as Special Constable Timothy Gorse and Kenneth Williams as PC Stanley Benson, decide to go undercover - dressed as women - in order to catch a gang of shoplifters.

The Carry On films would, over a 20-year, 30-film span, often include scenes of drag; one thinks of Peter Butterworth, for example, as DC Slobotham disguised as female bait in Carry On Screaming (1966), or Kenneth Cope, as Cyril, pretending to be a student nurse in Carry On Matron (1972). 

But whilst heterosexual actors playing straight characters dressed as women may be mildly amusing, it lacks the camp frisson and sheer joyfulness of two homosexual actors openly playing queer characters dressed as women. And thus nothing tops the scene with Hawtrey and Williams dragged up in Carry On Constable, which readers can enjoy by clicking here.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Curtis and Lemon were helped to play Josephine and Daphne by the legendary female impersonator (and trapeze artist) Barbette, who was hired by the studio to coach them in the art of drag. 

      Much admired by Jean Cocteau, Barbette was described by the French poet and playwright as a combination of angel, flower and bird who transforms effortlessly back and forth between man and woman, revealing the performative aspect of gender. In a seminal 1926 essay, Cocteau instructed his fellow artists to learn from Barbette if they wished to understand the nature of artifice. Cocteau also commissioned a series of photographs by Man Ray of Barbette and cast her in his experimental first film Le Sang d'un Poete (1930).

 

[2] Peter Majda makes the important point that it's not just Curtis and Lemmon who are performing exaggerated forms of femininity in Some Like It Hot - that their co-star Marilyn Monroe is also "essaying another aspect of her comedic persona, which is a cis female-form of drag"; one that is, in fact, "more complicated and layered because she's a woman, playing on the expectations of femininity".

      For Monroe's hyper-feminine (and almost cartoonish) character of Sugar Kane is also carefully constructed with clothes and cosmetics and also relies upon a certain ways of walking and talking, etc. As Judith Butler once said: We are all transvestites.

      See Peter Majda's post entitled 'Performative Femininity and the Absurd: Drag and Comedy in "Some Like It Hot"' (17 April 2019), on his excellent blog A Seat in the Aisle: click here. 

 

 

On the Language of Mushrooms

Sandy Doggett: The Mushroom Speaks (2020)

fineartamerica.com

 

 

One of the stories in today's press concerns the claim made by fungi boffin [1] Andrew Adamatzky that the electrical impulses sent by mycological organisms through filamentous structures called hyphae, can perhaps be compared to human language and that mushrooms are able to communicate with each other using a vocabulary containing up to fifty terms.

 

That's astonishing - and I'm always happy to read updates from the fungal world - but I'm not quite sure it constitutes news, as previous researchers and vegetal philosophers already theorised that whilst fungi may give the impression of being silent and secretive, they are actually quite social organisms, sharing information about soil conditions, food sources, and potential dangers on the Wood Wide Web [2]. 

 

Or, it seems, simply declaring their own existence: Putresco, ergo sum and death has lent me my body out of the damp black earth ... [3]  

 

Notes

 

[1] Not an official title, but one used by Nick McDermott in his take on the story; see 'Talking Shitake', in The Sun (6 April 2022): click here. 

      For an alternative report - which comes with more scientific detail, but lacks an amusing title - see Linda Geddes writing in The Guardian (6 April 2022): click here. 

 

[2] It is now understood that fungi play a positive role in the ecosystem and don't just infect plants, causing disease and decay, but connect with them via hyphae, which spread through the soil and penetrate the tips of plant roots at a cellular level, combining to form what is called a mycorrhiza. 

      In this way, individual plants are also joined to one another and able to exchange water, carbon, nitrogen, and other essential nutrients and minerals. These complex mycorrhizal networks are known colloquially as the Wood Wide Web. For an interesting essay on this topic, see Robert Macfarlane, 'The Secrets of the Wood Wide Web', in The New Yorker (7 Aug 2016): click here.   

[3] As much as I want this to be true, I feel obliged to point out that even Adamatzky concedes the possibility that perhaps fungi aren't actually saying anything. Far more research needs to be done before electrical activity and pulsing behaviour can be interpreted as language.

 

 

Bonus: to watch the trailer for The Mushroom Speaks, dir. Marion Neumann, (2021): click here. 

 

For a post on the poetry and politics of the mushroom from November 2014, click here. 

Into the Valley of the Giants with Gilbert Noon

 

Georgia O'Keeffe: Black Hills with Cedar (1941)

Oil on canvas (16 x 30 in.)

 

 

Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being, says Nietzsche [1]. And let us be doubly cautious about assigning it with a gender and speaking as if the body of the earth and the body of woman were one and the same thing. 

 

Having said that, I was guilty of doing precisely this in my misspent pagan youth. But now I don't much care for anthropomorphic metaphors of Mother Earth which stress her life-giving and nurturing aspects, particularly when tied to a spiritual ecofeminism and/or left-leaning green politics. 

 

I'm also no longer so keen on those attempts by ecosexuals and nature fetishists to think of the earth in erotic terms - as something one shouldn't merely worship and revere, but fuck [2]. Perhaps that's why the following paragraph from D. H. Lawrence's unfinished novel Mr Noon (1984) struck a chord:

 

"The valley began to depress him. The great slopes shelving upwards, far overhead: the sudden dark, hairy ravines in which he was trapped: all made him feel he was caught, shut in down below there. He felt tiny, like a dwarf among the great thighs and ravines of the mountains. There is a Baudelaire poem which tells of Nature, like a vast woman lying spread, and man, a tiny insect, creeping between her knees and under her thighs, fascinated. Gilbert felt a powerful revulsion against the great slopes and particularly against the tree-dark hairy ravines in which he was caught." [3] 

 

Some critics see this passage as evidence of Lawrence's misogyny, although I would argue that Gilbert Noon's reaction might better be described as gynophobic, rather than misogynistic; i.e., an irrational fear of (being engulfed within) the female body, rather than a learned dislike for and contempt of women per se.   

 

What it does tell us for sure is that, whatever other kinks Mr Noon may have, he's not a macrophile and doesn't - unlike Baudelaire - entertain sexual fantasies involving a giantess [4]; or, if unconsciously he does harbour such thoughts, then these clearly disturb him and he does what he can to repress them.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, §109.  

[2] See: 'On Ecosexuality' (6 Nov 2016): click here.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 251. 

      Gilbert Noon isn't the only Lawrence protagonist to resent being belittled by landscape; see my post on the case of Alexander Hepburn and his orophobia from Nov 2017: click here.

[4] I discuss macrophilia in a post dated 23 July 2019, entitled 'Bigging Up the Gibson Girl': click here. 

      The poem by Charles Baudelaire referred to is 'La Géante', in Les Fleurs du Mal (1857): click here.       

      Interestingly, although Baudelaire fantasises about living at the feet of a giantess, crawling on her enormous knees, enjoying her curves, and sleeping in the shade cast by her breasts, he doesn't actually speak of creeping between her knees and thighs - and so towards the hairy ravine of her cunt - as Lawrence (perhaps tellingly) misremembers. 

      However, it could be - as Lindeth Vasey suggests - that Lawrence is thinking of Tolstoi's description of a landowner's dream, involving a landscape that is transformed into the body of a giant woman: 'The old man dreamt that he was standing between the woman's legs, in front of him a deep, dark ravine, which sucked him in ...' See the explanatory note 251:37 on p. 328 of Mr Noon (CUP, 1984).       

 

Notes on an Edwardian Woman's Underwear (With Reference to the Case of Mrs Johanna Keighley)

'And, oh, quick if you please

Let every lady get on her chemise!'

 

 

I.

 

D. H. Lawrence's unfinished and, until 1984, unpublished comic novel, Mr Noon [a] is not my favourite by a long chalk, but it does contain some amusing scenes, including one in which the eponymous hero, Gilbert Noon, is disturbed - though not quite discovered - in flagrante with his married lover, Johanna, in his room at the Wolkenhof, a small and respectable family hotel, where she is well-known, located as it is in the town where her parents, the Baron and Baroness von Hebenitz, have their home.

 

The lovers have just agreed to stay together and decided that they must write and inform her husband of this. She was wearing "a lovely dress of dull reddish cashmere" [151], but this is soon discarded. For although he is clearly anxious about the shitstorm that lay ahead for them once their affair was made public, she can't help noticing the "sombre fire of passion in his eyes" [151] and that's her cue to get naked: "She could soon abandon herself to passion and delicious pleasure" [152] no matter what trouble was in store.

 

However, just as he is enjoying her, and she him, there comes a loud knock at the door: 

 

"Johanna, in the arms of Gilbert, gave an awful start. He sat up and listened, with visions of husbands, police, incensed official Barons and what-not coursing through his mind.

      'Bang-bang-bang!' came the double knock. Whoever it was, they would have heard the voices of the guilty pair. The door-handle gave a little squeak of protest as the unknown horror tried it from outside. Luckily the door was locked.

      'Bang-bang-bang!' came the officious knock. And still dead silence in the room, where the guilty pair lay on the bed with beating hearts. 

      'See who it is,' whispered Johanna, pushing him from her.

      And then he saw her, in puris naturalibus, flee swiftly, white and naked, behind a curtain which hung across a corner, huddling there with her feet, and the tip of her shoulder, and then, as she stooped, that exquisite finale of Salome showing round and white behind the curtain [...]

      He was in no better plight than she: not a rag, not a stitch on him, and there he stood in the middle of the room listening to that diabolical knocking and vacantly watching the come and go of the exquisite tailpiece to Johanna, as she stooped to unravel her stockings.

      And why, under such circumstances, should she be putting on her grey silk stockings, and routing for her garters with rosebuds on them. Why oh why, in the shipwreck of nudity, cling to the straw of a grey silk stocking." [152-53] [b]

Eventually, wrapped in his double-breasted brown overcoat, Gilbert answers the door and deals with the hotel manageress who is looking for Johanna, denying all knowledge of the latter's whereabouts. When he closes the door, Johanna springs out from behind the curtain "in her grey silk stockings, rose-bud garters, and chambric chemise" [154]. 

 

Still wrapped in his brown overcoat, even though painfully aware of his thin hairy legs sticking out, Gilbert watched as Johanna, in something of a panic, performs a form of reverse striptease, pulling on her "lacey-white knickers, her pretty, open work French stays, her grey silk petty and her reddish dress" [154]. 

 

Before he can even blink, she is tying her shoe-laces and then had "only to poke her hair more or less under the dusky-lustrous feather toque, and fling the lace scarf over her shoulders, and she was ready" [154] to leave - which she does, with a quick goodbye, but not even a peck on the cheek for her lover. 

  

 

II. 

 

What I love about this scene - apart from the farcical elements which demonstrate that Lawrence had more of a sense of humour than many critics like to acknowledge - is the amount of detail we are given concerning Johanna's clothing, particularly her undergarments [c].

 

For whilst it's true that Gilbert notices her nudity and seems particularly fascinated with her posterior - which he finds exquisite - mostly he seems intrigued by her grey silk stockings and rosebud garters, not to mention her lacey-white knickers. This confirms Angela Carter's claim in 'Lorenzo the Closet Queen' that Lawrence was obsessed with the lingerie of his heroines, which he catalogues with a loving and fetishistic eye for detail [d].   

And so, readers of Lawrence's work familiar with Gudrun's brightly coloured stockings and Lady Chatterley's sheer silk knickers, can, thanks to the above scene, also claim intimate knowledge of Johanna Keighley's underwear, which will doubtless provide some of them with the greatest joy of all [e]. 

It is, I think, something of a shame that most women today, in this age of comfort and convenience, seem to prefer wearing snug-fitting cotton briefs from M&S, or hideous thongs, when they (and their male lovers) could have so much more fun putting on and taking off layers of elaborate underwear - there's a reason that the Edwardian period is also known as La Belle Époque ...      

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1984).  

      As the editor says in his Introduction: "This volume of the Cambridge edition of D. H. Lawrence is of unique interest; it presents for the first time a substantially new, largely unpublished text. Part I of Mr Noon will be familiar to readers who have consulted the volume A Modern Lover, published in 1934, and to those who have read it as collected in Phoenix II, published in 1968; but, Part II, which is more than two times as long, has never before been published." [xix]

      The material I quote here is from Part II. Page references given in the post are to the CUP edition. 

 

[b] The answer, of course, is because - like the Brangwen sisters - Johanna regards her stockings as precious; more so even than jewels. See note [e] below.

 

[c] I'm sure there will be readers not only unfamiliar with the actual items of undergarment worn by an Edwardian woman such as Johanna Keighley, but ignorant even with one or two of the terms used by Lawrence in the passage quoted from Mr Noon. For example, some might be asking: What's a chemise? The answer to this and other related questions can be found in the second part of an illustrated online essay on ladies' clothing fashions in 1908 by Gail Brinson Ivey: click here.        

      See also the post entitled 'Dressing The 1900s Woman - Edwardian Lingerie' (6 Feb 2020) on the excellent blog Sew Historically: click here.

 

[d] Angela Carter's essay 'Lorenzo the Closet Queen' can be found in Nothing Sacred, (Virago, 1992). I discuss this essay in a 2013 post which can be found here. 

 

[e] In Women in Love, Gudrun presents her sister with "three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious". As one might imagine, Ursula is rapturous to receive such a beautiful gift: "'One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings'". 

      See D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 436. And see also my 2013 post discussing this scene, in which I examine why it is that - surprisingly - Lawrence condemns George Bernard Shaw as a crude and vulgar thinker for pointing out that it is often clothes that arouse our desire, not bare flesh: click here. 

 

Notes on 'The Ladybird' (Pt. 2)

If I were a little ladybird

And had four little wings

I'd fly to thee -

 

 

This post is a continuation of Notes on 'The Ladybird' (Pt.1): click here. 

 

 

V. 

 

And speaking of secret knowledge ... The Count, it turns out, subscribes to occultism and is a member of a secret society. One of his beliefs concerns the true (invisible) nature of fire and the blackness of the sun. As I have discussed this in a previous post, I won't go into details here [g]. 

 

Essentially, the Count's point is that, like fire, true love isn't white and ideal; it may look that way on the surface, but underneath it's dark; "a throbbing together in darkness" [180]. Daphne is unconvinced. Nevertheless, she could see the darkness in his eyes and perceived the "invisible, cat-like fire stirring deep inside them [...] coming towards her" [181]. And so she turns and hurries away. 

 

During the summer, she rather forgets about Count Dionys and remembers she has a husband; one who was shortly to return. Nevertheless, the Count's words have penetrated her unconscious: "So it was that in her own way she thought often enough of the Count's world inside-out." [181] And so it was she shivered when thinking of Basil, whose love had made her nerve-worn. 

 

She determined not to think of the Count and the secret love he offered: he was not merely an "impudent little fellow" [182], but a madman. Better off with Basil; "an adorable, tall, well-bred Englishman" [182] with a penchant for silk underwear. He might get on her nerves, but better that than the Count and his foreign unreality. 

 

"But still she used the Count's thimble." [183] Until, that is, she loses it (down the back of the sofa, as we shall see).

 

 

VI. 

 

In late Autumn, Daphne decides to visit the Count once more. She finds him collecting chestnuts and thinking to himself that "'the same power which put up the mountains could pull them down again'" [186], a thought that makes him happy. In other words, the Count has found his god at last: and he's a god of destruction who tears down the world of man as well as the mountains. 

 

Daphne thinks him foolish as well as perverse. He calls her a plucked white lily and tells her that he cares only about her invisible root - that's what he wishes to discover, though not with kisses, but with the hammer that beats in his heart. She again bids him farewell and takes her leave. "And henceforth she thought only of her husband, of Basil. She made the Count die out of her." [189] 

 

But when Basil returns to England and she hears his terribly cultured voice - "like cold blue steel" [190] - on the telephone, her heart "contracted with fear" [189] (which is never a great sign). When he arrives home, within moments he is on his knees and kissing her feet in amorous worship. Again, I have commented elsewhere on this scene, so won't discuss it here in any detail [h]. 

 

Needless to say, Daphne is a little frightened - almost horrified - but she was also "thrilled deep down to her soul" [193] and a little giddy with the sense of her own pale power: "She really felt she could glow white and fill the universe [...]" [193] 

 

While Daphne is semi-enjoying her new goddess status, Basil plonks himself on the sofa and pushes his hands "between the deep upholstery of the back and the seat" [193]. And lo and behold, he pulls out a plum - or, rather, Daphne's lost thimble, which seems to fascinate him almost as much as it does her. He questions her about it and is told the tale of Count Dionys. 

 

Then Basil returns to worshipping his wife - this time admiring her sacred white hands and wonderful Prosperine fingers [i], begging her to accept the sacrifice of himself (which sounds suspiciously like a euphemism and it's probably la petite mort that he desires, rather than actual death) [j]. 

 

Placed back on a pedestal and subject to Basil's adoration-lust, Daphne is soon feeling ill again. For alas, she was not the goddess he thought her. And of course she starts to dream about Count Dionys and "to yearn wistfully for him" [196]. So she decides, shortly before Christmas, to go visit him again - though this time accompanied by Basil. 

 

 

VII. 

 

Perhaps wishing to seem mysterious and full of the darkness that Count Dionys so loves, Daphne wears black furs and a black lace veil for her visit. She is worried, however, that he will still find her too modern in her beauty and effective loveliness. 

 

Uncertain whether the Count is mocking her with his compliments and flattering remarks, Daphne is sure of one thing - he doesn't like Basil: "Nay more, she could feel that the presence of her tall, gaunt, idealistic husband was hateful to the little swarthy man" [199], despite his polite manner. 

 

Strangely, however, Basil is fascinated by the Count. And before long Daphne is ignored by both men, as they exchange their philosophies of life: "She might just as well have been an ugly little nobody, for all the notice that was taken of her." [200] Nevertheless, she follows the argument between Basil and the Count - sympathetic to the latter, but agreeing with the former, whose words she believed to be true. 

 

In brief: Basil argues for love and the Count says there is something else; something unnameable beyond love (we know, of course, as readers of Lawrence, what this is: it's power and the so-called sacred responsibility of power as exercised by natural aristocrats). 

 

Daphne is not impressed by the Count's arguments, even though Basil finds what the latter says terribly amusing. And curiously enough, "it was now Basil who was attracted by the Count, and Daphne who was repelled" [204]. But if she now almost hates the Count, her grudge against her "white-faced, spiritually intense husband was sharp as vinegar" [205]. In all honesty, she feels let down by the pair of them - men!

 

What next? A gay romance? A queer threesome? No - that's not quite Lawrence's style. But Basil does invite the Count to stay with him and Daphne, at his in-laws mansion, for a fortnight before being shipped back to Austria. Of course, this was rather naively inviting trouble ... 

 

 

VIII. 

 

Whilst staying at her parents place, the house in which she was born, Daphne thinks with fondness of the working-people and regrets the fact that, ultimately, her consciousness "seemed to make a great gulf between her and the lower classes" [211]. She accepted this as a form of fate - even as her doom: "She could never meet in real contact anyone but a super-conscious finished being like herself: or like her husband [...]" [211] 

 

That said, there was the Count: he had something that was hot and invisible; "a dark flame of life that might warm the cold white fire of her own blood" [211]. However, whilst he stays at her home, she mostly avoids contact with him. In fact, all three - Daphne, Basil, and their queer guest - avoided one another as much as possible. And the days slipped by ... 

 

At night, when alone in his room and alone in his soul, the Count likes to sing "the old songs of his childhood" [212], in a small, high-pitched voice: "It was a curious noise: the sound of a man who is alone in his own blood: almost the sound of a man who is going to be executed." [212] 

 

One night, Daphne hears this strange "bat-like sound of the Count's singing to himself" [212]. And, even though unable to understand a word, the crooning made her forget everything. And so, after that first night, she listens out for the sound of his voice. Indeed, it became "almost an obsession with her" [212]; she had to hear him - and she had to respond to this call from the beyond that promised to transport her out of herself and out of her world. 

 

When the singing stopped, Daphne went to sleep; "a queer, light, bewitched sleep" [213]. This enchantment continues into the daytime: "She felt strange and light, as if pressure had been removed from around her [...] her feet felt so light, and her breathing delicate and exquisite" [213]. 

 

One night, the Count doesn't sing and Daphne is terrified lest the spell be broken and she is thrown back into her old life. She waits like one doomed throughout the following day. Happily, that night the singing resumes - and Daphne can resist no longer; she goes to his room, answering his peculiar call.

 

Whilst sitting outside his room and trying to find the courage to enter, a new song begins; the most terrible song of all, a kind of inhuman serenade: "It began with a rather dreary, slow, horrible sound, like death." [214] Still, this does the trick and Daphne knocks desperately on his door and pushes her way past the astonished figure of the Count when he answers, into the darkness of his room. 

 

There's an awkward silence as they sit together in the dark. If she remained more or less spellbound, he was genuinely a little embarrassed by her presence in his room and unsure what to do: 

 

"Then suddenly, without knowing, he went across in the dark [...] And he sat beside her on the couch. But he did not touch her. Neither did she move. The darkness flowed about them thick like blood, and time seemed dissolved in it. They sat with the small, invisible distance between them, motionless, speechless, thoughtless." [215] 

 

Lawrence continues, in his own unique manner: 

 

"Then suddenly he felt her fingertips touch on his arm, and a flame went over him that left him no more a man. He was something seated in flame [...] like an Egyptian king-god [...]" [216] 

 

Daphne slides to the floor and presses her face against his feet, her hair against ankles, and there she clung, crying, whilst he sat erect and motionless. Unable to offer her much of a future in this world, he promises that she will be his in the next life: 

 

"'In the dark you are mine. And when you die you are mine. But in the day, you are not mine, because I have no power in the day. In the night, in the dark, and in death, you are mine. [...] So don't forget - you are the night-wife of the ladybird [...]" [216-17] 

 

Is that really likely to satisfy a woman? I mean, it's nice to know you have someone waiting who wants you in the afterlife for all eternity. But that doesn't pay the bills and mostly it just seems an elaborate way for him to take his leave of her whilst, at the same time, making her feel - as Madonna would say - like a virgin / touched for the very first time [k]. 

 

 

IX.

 

After this, Daphne's face takes on a delicate stillness and purity, which even Basil notices. And this new innocence negates his ecstatic desire for her: "She was so still, like a virgin girl. And it was this quiet, intact quality of virginity in her which puzzled him most, puzzled his emotions and his ideas. He became suddenly ashamed to make love to her." [217-18] 

 

They decide to live more as brother and sister than man and wife from this point on. This suits Daphne, who has decided she belongs to the Count, but it also suits Basil: "The excitement of desire had left him, and now he seemed to see clear and feel true for the first time in his life." [218] 

 

The Count leaves, but not without giving another esoteric pep talk to Daphne: 

 

"'Don't forget me. Always remember me. I leave my soul in your hands and your womb. Nothing can ever separate us, unless we betray one another. [...] And never fail to believe in me. Because even on the other side of death I shall be watching for you. I shall be king in Hades when I am dead. And you will be at my side [...] since you are the wife of the ladybird." [220] 

 

One can't help wondering how many other women the Count has said this to ...? It seems a well-rehearsed speech to me.

 

And one can't help thinking that it's the kind of poisonous sweet nonsense which male cult leaders whisper into the ears of their female followers; one could easily imagine Charles Manson, for example, saying this to one of his devoted hippie girls. No wonder when he abandons Daphne, the Count laughs to himself. 

 

 

Notes

 

[g] Readers who are interested should see 'On the Scintillation of Being' (9 Jan 2018): click here. 

 

[h] Readers who are interested should see 'On the Transsexual Consummation of Foot Fetishism' (25 July 2013): click here. 

 

[i] For my thoughts on hand partialism, see the post of 27 Dec 2012: click here. 

 

[j] In many ways, Basil is similar to the character of Everard in Lawrence's novel Mr Noon: both men have a sensual nature which they disguise with their idealism; both like to kiss the feet of the woman they adore as a white goddess; and both are prepared to sacrifice themselves, if only they might receive their gratification first. See Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 191-92.

 

[k] Madonna, 'Like a Virgin', single release (31 Oct 1984) from the album of the same title (Sire Records, 1984), written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg. Click here to watch the official video, dir. Mary Lambert, on YouTube.

Notes on 'The Ladybird' (Pt. 1)

Wenn ich ein Marienkäfer wär'

Und auch vier Flüglein hätt',

Flög' ich zu dir -

 

I. 

 

The first work by D. H. Lawrence that I ever wrote about was The Ladybird [a]. Along with The Fox and The Captain's Doll, it formed part of my English A-level syllabus. 

 

My teacher, Mr Woodward, was not impressed with my musings, however, and gave me the lowest mark I'd ever had for an essay (I think it was a D, but that may even have come with a minus symbol). Anyway, I'm hoping to improve upon that here, in this rather more considered series of reflections ... [b]

 

 

II. 

 

The Ladybird opens in a hospital for prisoners of war, in November 1917. 

 

Lady Beveridge was paying a visit to the sick and wounded out of the goodness of her pierced heart. For despite losing two sons and her brother in the War, she loved humanity; "and come what might, she would continue to love it" [157] - including her enemies. It was the Christian thing to do. And besides, she had been educated in Dresden and had many German friends. 

 

Whilst the narrator of the tale seems to admire Lady Beveridge's refusal to be swept up into a general form of hate, it's clear that he's scornful of her universal love and moral idealism, even if he doesn't openly jeer at her "out-of-date righteousness" [158] and bluestocking elegance, like some members of the younger generation.   

 

Whilst walking the wards, Lady Beveridge encounters someone she knows: Count Johann Dionys Psanek. As recently as the spring of 1914, he and his wife had stayed at her country house in Leicestershire. But now he's not in great shape, having had one bullet tear through the upper part of his chest and another bullet break one of his ribs:

 

"The black eyes opened: large, black, unseeing eyes, with curved black lashes. He was a small man, small as a boy, and his face too was rather small. But all the lines were fine, as if they had been fired with a keen male energy. Now the yellowish swarthy paste of his flesh seemed dead, and the fine black brows seemed drawn on the face of one dead. The eyes however were alive: but only just alive, unseeing and unknowing." [159] [c]

 

Poor Lady Beveridge "felt another sword-thrust of sorrow in her heart" [159] as she looked upon what appeared to be a dying man. Then, saddened, she went off to visit her daughter Daphne; yet another of those young women whom Lawrence likes to describe as poor, even though they live in flats overlooking Hyde Park. 

 

Lady Daphne, 25, is tall and good-looking; a natural beauty, with a splendid frame and "lovely, long, strong legs" [160-61]. But, alas, she is wasting away, due to the "wild energy damned up inside her" [161] for which she has no outlet. 

 

For Daphne had married an adorable husband (Basil) and adopted her mother's creed of universal love and benevolence, whereas she needed a daredevil and to be reckless like her father: 

 

"Daphne was not born for grief and philanthropy [...] So her own blood turned against her, beat on her nerves, and destroyed her. It was nothing but frustration and anger which made her ill, and made the doctors fear consumption." [160-61] 

This, of course, is a common theme in Lawrence's work and Lady Daphne is in much the same mould as Lady Chatterley [d]. No suprises then where this tale is headed ...   

 

III.

 

Daphne remembers Count Dionys with genuine fondness. He may have seemed a bit comical and resembled a monkey in her eyes, but he was a dapper little man nonetheless - not to mention "'an amazingly good dancer, small yet electric'" [164]. 

 

Daphne also recalls that Count Dionys presented her with a thimble on her seventeenth birthday. Now, as everybody knows, thimbles were traditionally associated with the ritual of courtship, so it was perhaps not the kind of gift that a married man ought to be giving to a teenage girl. Daphne's acceptance of the thimble, however, arguably indicated her willingness to be more than friends at some point ... 

 

At any rate, Daphne decides to visit the hospital (with her mother at her side, for appearances sake). She wears a black sealskin coat "with a skunk collar pulled up to her ears" [165]. Like many people, she finds being inside a hospital very distressing; "everything gave her a dull feeling of horror" [165]. 

 

But then, the Count finds her somewhat frightening: "He looked at her as if she were some strange creature standing near him." [165] She sits and attempts to make small talk. He tells her that he had wanted to die and that he wouldn't mind if they buried him alive "'if it were very deep, and dark, and the earth heavy above'" [167]. Which is a bit awkward. 

 

It's ten days before she next visits. But go back she does, unable to forget him. Happily, he's looking and feeling better, though his conversation still leaves much to be desired. As a rule, I would advise that when someone kindly brings you flowers and asks if you like them, it's best not to reply: 

 

"'No [...] Please do not bring flowers into this grave. Even in gardens, I do not like them. When they are upholstery to human life!'" [168]

 

Queer, obstinate, and rude only works with a very rare sort of woman - though fortunately for the Count, Daphne is one such: "She sat looking at him with a long, slow wondering look." [169] In other words, she's hooked and even when she's not sitting by his bedside she's thinking of him: "He seemed to come into her mind suddenly, as if by sorcery." [169]

 

And so, over the winter months, their relationship develops ... 

 

 

IV. 

 

One bright morning in February, the Count tells Daphne that he's a subject of the sun. He also reveals that he's a tricophile who believes in the magical healing power of female hair. He asks if, one day, she will allow him to wrap her golden locks round his hands. Whilst not consenting, neither does she rule out his kinky request: "'Let us wait till the day comes,' she said." [171]   

Another time, the Count asks Daphne if people tell her she is beautiful. Before then (rudely and rather cruelly) asking what kind of lover her husband is: "'Is he gentle? Is he tender? Is he a dear lover?'" [172] She replies yes, but curtly, to demonstrate her displeasure at the question - or perhaps at the thought of her husband and his lovemaking technique.  

The Count smiles and informs her that every creature finds its mate; not just the dove and the nightingale, but also the buzzard and the sea-eagle. And the adder with a mouthful of poison. Perhaps not quite sure what he is driving at, nevertheless the last thought makes her give a little laugh.

By the early spring, the Count is able to get up and get dressed. He and Daphne sit on the terrace in the sun, laughing and chatting. He asks her about the thimble and she tells him she still has it. And so he asks her to sew him a shirt [e] - one with his initial and his family crest: a seven-spotted ladybird [f]

However, even when he gets his handsewn shirt, the Count isn't particularly grateful: "'I want my anger to have room to grow'" [177], which is difficult in a shirt that doesn't fit. Daphne decides not to see him again. But, of course, she can't stay away - he has a subtle (but powerful) hold over her; "the strange thrill of secrecy was between them" [179].   

 

 

This post continues in part two (sections V-IX): click here. 

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The Ladybird was a completely rewritten and extended version of an earier short story by Lawrence - 'The Thimble' - which I have discussed here. It was published in a volume along with two other novellas in 1923. The edition I am using here is The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). All page references given in the post refer to this edition.

 

[b] It's arguable that all my work on Lawrence over the last 40-odd years has, in fact, been an attempt to to compensate for this one low grade and to erase the stain on my early academic record. I suppose also I wanted to find out what it was that I had overlooked in my initial engagement with The Ladybird, a work which, as one critic says, has provoked a wide range of "evaluative judgements, theoretical approaches, and invested interpretations". 

      See Peter Balbert, 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at The Ladybird: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Cynthia Asquith, And the Incremental Structure of Seduction', Studies in the Humanities, 1 June, 2009, (Indiana University of Pennsylvania): click here to read this essay online via The Free Library. 

[c] Lawrence is keen to emphasise the non-Aryan aspect of the Count's features, with his black hair and beard, and his "queer, dark, aboriginal little face" [159]. As Dieter Mehl writes: "It is made clear that Count Dionys is not of German but of Czech origin, with possible associations of Gipsy [...] blood. Throughout the story, the Count is associated with Eastern races and cultures rather than with Western civilisation." See Mehl's explanatory note 159:35 on p. 258.   

 

[d] It's very tempting to see Lady Daphne as an early version of Lady Chatterley; like the latter, for example, she has a thing for the work-people on her parents estate: 

      "She talked with everybody, gardener, groom, stableman, with the farm hands. [...] The curious feeling of intimacy across a [socio-cultural] breach fascinated her. [...] There was a gamekeeper she could have loved - an impudent, ruddy-faced, laughing, ingratiating fellow [...]" [211]

 

[e] One wonders if the Count shares the same thought as Basil when it comes to wearing a hand-sewn shirt: "'To think I should have it next to my skin! I shall feel you all round me, all over me. I say how marvellous that will be!'" [194] There's something very feminine about this I think; women often like to wear their partner's clothes in order to experience a similar feeling. Researchers have found that the scent of a loved one on clothing can lower the amount of stress hormone cortisol in the brain, making the wearer feel happier and more secure.

 

[f] Later in the story, Daphne's husband Basil asks the Count about the ladybird on his family crest. The latter says it's quite a heraldic insect in his view, with a long history that can be traced all the way back to the mysterious Egyptian scarab: "'So I connect myself to the Pharaohs: just through my ladybird.'" [209] The Count is also happy if this connects him - like the scarab, a type of African dung-beetle - to the principle of decomposition.  

To Hull and Back (In Memory of Gillian Hall)

Lucy Beaumont / Michelle Dewberry

 

 

I. 

 

Lucy Beaumont and Michelle Dewberry are the two women I love most on British television. The former is a comedian and writer, who once worked on the meat counter at ASDA; the latter, a businesswoman and broadcaster, who once worked on the tills at Kwik Save. 

Both are blonde: both are beautiful: both are smart, sexy, and successful - so what's not to love? 

 

However, the thing that makes them particularly attractive - for me at least - is the fact that they share a distinctive English accent, both coming as they do from the fabled city of Hull ...

 

 

II. 

 

Now, I know that Hull - or Kingston upon Hull to give it its royal name - is not everybody's favourite place on earth; Philip Larkin once described it as a fish-smelling dump full of drunken dullards. But even he came to recognise its charms eventually, including, perhaps, its cream-coloured telephone boxes [1].

 

I know also that not everyone finds the Hull accent with its amusing vowel sounds - including the letter 'o', which sounds as if it should have an umlaut over it - as alluring as I do, but there you gö [2]. 

 

I suppose, when I think about it, the reason I like to listen to Lucy Beaumont and Michelle Dewberry on the telly, is because their accent triggers a certain romantic nostalgia, reminding me of lost love and times gone by. 

 

Reminding me, that is to say, of Gillian, the beautiful young punk and self-styled scorpion goddess from Hull [3], with whom I was romantically involved back in the early 1980s and who introduced me to the delights of coition, as well as Humberside.

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Philip Larkin moved to Hull in 1955 to take up the post of head librarian at the university. He soon began expressing his negative feelings for the city and its people in letters written to friends: 'I'm settling down in Hull all right. Every day I sink a little further.' 

      However, he gradually found things to like about Hull, where he lived and worked for thirty years, producing most of his greatest poetry, including 'Here', which opens his collection The Whitsun Weddings (Faber and Faber, 1964): click here to read online. 

      Readers interested in the Larkin/Hull love/hate relationship might enjoy Stephen Walsh's article in The Guardian (30 May 2017): click here.

 

[2] Those who study this kind of thing refer to it as a metaphonic mutation. It means that whereas, for example, the word goat is pronounced ɡəʊt in standard English - and ɡoːt across most of Yorkshire - it becomes ɡɵːʔt̚ in and around Hull. 

      An example of the Hull accent can be found in the British Library's Accents and Dialects Collection: click here to listen to a working class teenage schoolgirl, named Jessica Hardcastle, speak about her family, friends and social life. 

      Readers might also find an article by Jasmine Andersson (23 Jan 2020) on the i News website of interest: click here. 

 

[3] As a matter of fact, Gillian was from Leven, rather than Hull; one of those isolate villages on the outskirts of the city, where lives are clarified by loneliness, as Larkin would say.