[lit-ideas] Re: "My Secret Life" and its place in the history of Eng.Lit.
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:33:39 EDT
Thanks to S. Ward for his comments
>I'd love to reply to this message, but it would give everything away ...
>Instead, I refer you to I. Gibson,
>
> "The Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of
> Henry Spencer Ashbee."
>
>A superb example of literary detection that nobody would admit to reading.
>It's very good (so I'm told by myself) and claims to finger Ashbee (as the
>author of 'My Secret Life').
Interesting -- so you _are_ giving it (if not everything) away, as we say in
Argentina. Incidentally your post does not (_really_) surprise me, does it.
But motivated me to do some search.
As it happens (or as _I_ happened), as I was visiting my favourite NYC
bookshop, "The Srand", and browsing their [admittedly meagre, for such a big
city,
must say] section on "Erotica" (basement, to the right), where I found
(inter alii and alia) and bought myself a (second-hand, as it were) copy of a
book
I would otherwise have had some problem _looking for_ -- one of those books
you just happen to c[ome] up with, never _look for_ (unless you are the
boring student in S. Fry's 'The Liar' writing a dissertation on Pornography at
the Bodleian).
Anyway, the book is
Steven Marcus,
The 'Other' Victorians:
A study of Sexuality [and pornography, must add]
in Mid-Nineteenth Century England
-- on which, for purposes of cataloguing this in The Swimming Pool Library
-- which I am a custodian of -- wrote, "he must mean, "1850-1900". Odd.
Strictly speaking, mid-nineteenth" would be what's referred to in another
book as "VICTORIAN NOON" which is another misnomer ("1850" alone is
'mid-century'). I suppose the phrase means, '1840-1860'. Anyway, I'm
disgressing.
Marcus devotes two long chapters to "My Secret Life" -- original in 14
volumes -- and yes, the H. S. Ashbee connection _is_ made, although I presume
it's
a typo:
"Ashbee's singular merit was his ability to withhold comment on books he had
seen or read". Thus opens the first chapter on "The Secret Life". I suppose
Marcus means, "he had NOT seen or read". This would make the phrase
ambiguous. Since I do not think Ashbee lists "The Secret Life" in his (well,
by
Pisanus Fraxi) _Index_, it's not clear what Marcus meant.
"My Secret Life" is notably unillustrated -- but I seem to remember (from
Edward Lucie Smith -- EROTICA: The fine art of sex that there was an
illustration or two related to it). This will go with Ashbee, who we are told
by Marcus,
did not find his forte in 'pictorial arts'.
Re: Ashbee, Marcus writes the usual details. He wrote under the pseudonym of
"'Pisanus Fraxi[nus]", "Pissed ash", literally, and was born in London in
1834 -- one decade later than the birthdate for the narrator of "My Secret
Life" should be placed, according to Marcus, though]. Ashbee died in 1900 and
"bequeathed the bulk of his library of rare books -- to the number of 15,229
--
to the British Museum." We are told the BM was _forced_ to accept the gift if
it was going to keep Ashbee's collection of Don Quixotes!
The biographical material Marcus relies on is basically the DNB and
Pope-Hennessy's book on "Monckton Milnes", and I assume I. Gibson will quote
from
Marcus.
I was slightly disturbed by Ashbee's claim, or 'rule' -- so gentlemanly
Victorian, "Never to criticise a work which I have not read". Why, quite the
opposite of the dictum of that flop, the Right Revd. Sidney Smith, "I never
read
a book before reviewing it -- it prejudices a man so."
When it comes to "My Secret Life", Marcus adds some interesting commentary.
One we may call
The English (as opposed to Scottish)
Enlightenment
"The compiler of the encyclopaedia [that this book is] claimed to have
personally tested all sexual aberrations [most of which I find pretty
pathetic, as
the narrator seems to derive so little pleasure from them, as s/he should
perhaps. JLS] described therein, which may help to explain why the work reads
much like like a series of notations than does the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_". I assume D. Ritchie will be pleased by the comparison.
The thing, and this will interest Judy Evans, who reads French fluently, was
published in France as "Ma Vie Secrete".
I should also tell L. Horn about this reference too, "The Horn Book: Studies
in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography". Tomorrow.
The narrator of "My secret life" "seems to have been born some time between
1820 and 1825" (But Ashbee was born in 1834). Personally, I think this is a
minor discrepancy, since a writer can well imitate the style of his elders.
I note a perhaps more serious mistake in Marcus's chronisms: "The author
uses the expression 'Tommy Atkins', which indicates that he was still engaged
in
writing the narrative after 1882, the year of the campaign in Egypt which
brought forth that term."
I seem to remember, however, from browsing the pages of that most boring of
books, "A History of British Army" (Penguin) that the term was used by
Wellington, much earlier than that (I was doing research on 'Tommy Atkins',
the
song from the first musical-comedy ever, (c) 1989).
"Until the age of 12, he 'never went to school'". So he was, strictly
speaking, 'untrained' -- to use Geary's dictio technica. I'm less sure about
Ashbee,
but of course, he was using an _alter ego_ which makes literary detection
such a fascinating thing to read. Incidentally, I'm also trying to locate that
book, by M. Hyde, I think, on Prince Eddy -- another fascinating character,
The man who would be king.
I agree with Marcus when he writes of "My secret life", "There is none of
the self-inflation and self-aggrandizement that make most sexual memoirs so
distateful and untrustworthy". They do read more like a medical thing, or from
the mind of an 'erotomaniac' -- I love that word -- as Ashbee apparently was.
I would think the OED recognises the author of "My Secret Life" under 'gay'
to mean 'quean', or 'disreputable woman'. Thus, a gay woman (he detects them
by sight) told him, upon his showing his [membrum virile]m "I've seen plenty
smaller". Then the narrator gentlemanly puts it, "But still the idea clung to
me that it was not a [genitalia] to be in any way proud of".
I think there is a book by Leavitt on "Secret Literature" (it _was_ at the
Strand but I failed to buy it then -- "You can't have everything" my
consciousness-cum-wallet would say). Leavitt's thesis is that there was like a
code
literature, a sort of hermetical tradition. So, while I value I. Gibson's
whodunit achievements, it is also fascinating to think of a book that remained
anonymous for such a long time (Like "Teleny" which as every school boy knows,
was written by Oscar Wilde, or was it?).
I love using "Eng.Lit" in the way that Margaret Drabble would so much hate
-- but who is _she_ to tell _us_ what's canonical and what not, and why didn't
she include a note on "My secret life" in her otherwise boring "Shortened
Oxford Companion to English Literature"? (My, I prefer the enlarged version by
P. Harvey).
Cheers,
JL
************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
Other related posts:
