In a message dated 7/8/2009 11:31:07 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: I've been watching my grandchildren slowly -- ever so slowly -- learn that language need not be in earnest. By the time I'm through with them they won't know what earnestness means. ------ J. Wager: >One of the most remarkable works for the stage ever! >Characters lie almost every time they open their mouths, but it turns >out that each and every lie is actually genuine truth! --- According to a good source, what Wilde meant was The importance of being Gay (if you can believe that!) ---- "Dorian" is also code for 'Gay': -- I've been watching my grandchildren slowly -- ever so slowly -- learn that language need not be in earnest. By the time I'm through with them they won't know what earnestness means. ----- 1879 G. M. HOPKINS Lett. to R. Bridges (1955) 89, I do avoid them [sc. inversions], because they weaken..the earnestness or in-earnestness of the utterance. ---- 1561 T. NORTON Calvin's Inst. IV. xx. 162 They must watch with all care, earnestnesse, and diligence. 1670 WALTON Lives III. 158 Never expressing an earnestness..but an humble Gravity sutable to the Aged. 1779 JOHNSON Lett. (1788) II. ccvii. 55 Keep your mind quiet, do not think with earnestness even of your health. 1833 LAMB Elia (1860) 361 Sawing, every one with the might and earnestness of a Demiurgus. 1849 ROBERTSON Serm. Ser. I. ii. (1866) 32 Earnestness; that is, sincerity of purpose. 1848 W. K. KELLY tr. L. Blanc's Hist. Ten Y. II. 581 The discussion began with warmth on one side, and grave earnestness on the other. --- cf. urning [a. Ger., coined by K. H. Ulrichs (‘Numa Numantius’) in 1864.] A homosexual. Cf. URANIAN a.1 1c, n.2, URANISM. 1883 Jrnl. Nervous & Mental Dis. Apr. 200 For himself and fellow-Urnings there was nothing left but this unnatural love. 1892 C. G. CHADDOCK tr. Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis 255 The urning loves and deifies the male object of his affections. 1896 J. A. SYMONDS Probl. Mod. Ethics vii. 91 Man, Woman, and Urningthe third being either a male or a female in whom we observe a real and inborn, not an acquired or a spurious inversion of appetite. 1909 E. CARPENTER Intermediate Sex (ed. 2) 135 According to the information of De Joux..the number of Urnings in all Europe is about five millions. Early in his relationship with 'Bosie' Douglas, Wilde and his wife visited Douglas' mother, Lady Queensberry, who wanted to talk to them about her son's lack of academic achievements (he left Oxford without a degree) and extravagant habits. For Wilde the visit "had all the embarrassment associated with meeting one's beloved's mother". Lady Queensberry lived in Bracknell. Wilde's use of the name Ernest is obviously code-word. Nicholson in his poem "Of Boy's Names" in Love in Earnest: Sonnets, Ballades, and Lyrics (1892) writes "Though Frank may ring like silver bell, And Cecil softer music claim, They cannot work the miracle, – 'Tis Ernest sets my heart a-flame." The poem was promoted by Symonds and Nicholson and Wilde contributed pieces to the same issue of The Chameleon magazine. As Aronson shown, the word "earnest" soon became a code-word for homosexual, as in: "Is he earnest?", in the same way that "Is he so?" and "Is he musical?" were also employed. "bunbury" and "bunburying", meanwhile, which are used to implicate double lives and as excuses for absences, are—according to a letter from A. Crowley to Sir Bruce Lockhart -- an inside joke that came about after Wilde boarded a train at Banbury on which he met a schoolboy. They got into conversation and subsequently arranged to meet again at Sunbury. D. Sinden wrote: "Everybody in theatrical circles knew that. Earnest was a synonym for homosexual, and to Bunburying was homosexual sex. I asked Sir John Gielgud, the notorious cottager, for further confirmation and he said, "The Question!" Cheers, J. L. Speranza Villa Speranza, Bordighera ---- Refs: Sedfield, "The Wilde Century" **************Dell Studio XPS Desktop: Save up to $400 - Limited Time Offer (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222466512x1201463496/aol?redir=htt p:%2F%2Faltfarm.mediaplex.com%2Fad%2Fck%2F12309%2D81939%2D1629%2D3) ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html