Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

“Bizarre Love Triangle”: Tracing Power and Pedagogy in the Letters of John Addington Symonds, A. Mary F. Robinson and Vernon Lee, 1878–90

2013; Routledge; Volume: 94; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0013838x.2013.764076

1744-4217

Sally Newman,

Philippine History and Culture

Abstract This paper reflects on the challenges arising during the editing of the literary correspondence between poet A. Mary F. Robinson and intellectuals Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) and John Addington Symonds. The letters between Symonds and romantic partners Vernon Lee and Mary Robinson reveal the unpredictable ways through which desire finds expression. While Symonds was Mary Robinson's mentor in her study of Greek Language and Literature, Symonds and Vernon Lee were intellectual rivals. This paper explores the ways in which this tension in their relationship was played out through competing pedagogical models focused on Mary Robinson. Acknowledgements My research was generously supported by a visiting scholarship from the British Academy and a travelling fellowship from the Australian Academy of Humanities, Embassy of France in Australia. I would like to thank the staff of the British Library and Bristol University Special Collections for their assistance in locating material, and in particular to acknowledge the expertise of Hannah Lowery at Bristol and of Mme Laurence La Bras at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This article has benefited from the insightful comment and critique of Anna Clarke, Catherine Maxwell, Jana Funke, Sean Brady, Claire Tanner and Anne Harris. I am grateful to the two peer reviewers for their suggestions and feedback on this article and to Sharon Bickle for sharing research materials with me. I want to acknowledge the generosity of communities of scholars who have given feedback on earlier drafts of this paper presented at the Birkbeck Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar, the Queer Discipline Seminar, King's College London, the Berkshire Conference of Women's Historians, and the Feminist Historians' Seminar, the University of Melbourne. Notes 1Colby; Vicinus, Intimate Friends; and Brady, Male Homosexuality. 2Evangelista, 68. 3Berlant, 21. This is to slightly rephrase Lauren Berlant's succinct formulation. 4See, for example, Evangelista; Maxwell and Pulham, 166–78; and Vicinus, “Faun Love”, 753–64. 5Crozier uses the correspondence between Havelock Ellis and Symonds to reveal the extent of Symonds's contribution to the collaboration. It was Symonds who approached Ellis with the original idea of the topic and collaboration. See Ellis and Symonds (ed. Crozier), 35–53. See also Bauer, 58–72. 6Havelock Ellis (HE) to John Addington Symonds (JAS), letter, 3 January 1893, Havelock Ellis Papers, Add MSS 70524. 7Ibid. 8HE to JAS, letter, 9 February 1893, Havelock Ellis Papers, Add MSS 70524. 9See, for example, Booth, 283–301. 10Brady notes Edward Carpenter was a more attractive figure for early gay historians to whom “Symonds appeared firmly as belonging in another age.” Brady, Male Homosexuality, 159. 11Grosskurth, Woeful Victorian. But see Grosskurth, “Bringing Symonds Out of the Closet”, 175, where she notes that the title was her publisher's choice, and one with which she didn't agree. 12Pemble, 50–70, vividly captures the incredible drama surrounding the deliberations over the fate of Symonds's literary estate. Symonds's youngest daughter, Dame Katharine Furse, documented her search for her father's papers in “Memorandum Regarding My Father, John Addington Symonds' Papers”, Symonds Family Papers, DM 911. 13Horatio Brown to Margaret Vaughan, letter, 24 June 1923, Symonds Family Papers, DM 367. 14See, for example, Colby; Vicinus, Intimate Friends, 143–70; Maxwell and Pulham; Pulham. 15Gunn. 16Smyth, 28. 17See, for example, Kandola, 471. 18Marandon. 19Robinson asked Darmesteter to marry her after a short correspondence and only three meetings. Her family and Vernon Lee opposed the marriage because Robinson had been crippled by a spinal injury/disease. As Lee's invalid brother described the situation: “A woman who is capable of engaging herself unconditionally to marry a ricketty [sic] cripple whom she has seen only three times is, as far as that action goes, immodest and unmoral. It will be no thanks to her but to others if she do not [sic] become the mother of some scrofulous abortion.” Eugene Lee-Hamilton to Vernon Lee (VL), letter, 17 September 1887, quoted in Colby, 127. Unfortunately, I do not have the space here to go into detail; suffice to say, Lee's brother, Eugene, suffered from a psychosomatic illness which rendered him prostrate for years but miraculously disappeared after the death of his mother, Matilda Paget. Additionally, Darmesteter was Jewish, and anti-Semitism may be a subtext to this eugenicist diatribe spouted by Lee-Hamilton. Vicinus notes that Robinson's first marriage to James Darmesteter was “a mariage blanc” (literally, white marriage, i.e. unconsummated): Vicinus, Intimate Friends, 158. 20The fame of Robinson's salon in Paris was reported in “Men and Women Who Write”, Pall Mall Gazette 7893 (7 July 1890). See also Robinson's apologetic note to Vernon Lee, who was planning to visit her in Paris over the summer, that “There will be no ‘fatted celebrities’. They have all left Paris ten days ago.” A. Mary F. Robinson (AMFR) to VL, letter [c. 1888–89], Fonds Anglais, 243, ff. 9–10. 21I discuss the methodological issues involved in using holograph material in contemporary histories of intimacy in Newman, “Aileen Palmer's Textual Lives”, 133–94. And in the letters between AMFR and VL in Newman, “Archival Traces of Desire”, 51–75. 22See Vadillo; Prins, “Lady's Greek”; Harrington. 23Cooley, 322. 24Dever, Newman and Vickery, “Introduction: The Intimate Archive”, 23. 25Derrida, 17. Arondekar, 17, argues that “the archival object of sexuality, after all, emerges only after it is lost, a be-coming that can conversely only take place if more stories of its loss are produced”. 27Quoted in Symonds, 381–2 n. 1. 28Ibid. 26Quoted in Pemble, 54. 29Furse notes that she “begged her [Mary Robinson] to let me have father's letters if she could spare them”, annotation on letter from AMFR to Katharine Furse (KF), 12 June 1939, Symonds Family Papers, DM 202/A/1. 30Traub, 249–50. 31Doan, Citation2001. 32Sedgwick, Between Men, 21. 33Castle, 72. 34Sedgwick, Between Men, 21 35Vicinus, “Faun Love”, 754. 36I am grateful to the peer reviewer of this article for drawing these to my attention. 37Sinfield, 14. 38Symonds to Violet Paget (VL), Symonds, 740–1. 40Quoted in Prins, “Lady's Greek”, 598. 39AMFR to KF, letter, 12 June 1939, Symonds Family Papers, DM 202/A/1. 41Symonds, 908. 42Prins, “Lady's Greek”, 597. 43Janet Catherine Symonds to Fanny Protheroe, letter, 12 September 1910, Symonds Family Papers, DM 190. 44Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds, 223. 45KF to Walter Roch (WR), letter, 19 May 1949, Symonds Family Papers, DM 911/71. 46Letter dated 23 July 1880. Symonds Family Papers, DM 109. 47Symonds, 930. 48Vicinus, “Art of Nostalgia”, 615 n. 10. 49Vicinus, Intimate Friends, 153. 50Evangelista, and Maxwell and Pulham, 166–78, consider these letters in terms of Symonds's possessive attitude to Robinson. 51Symonds, 635. 52Ibid., 636. 53Ibid., 908. 54Ibid., 898. 55Ibid., 905. 56Ibid., 908. 57Ibid., 912–3. 58Ibid., 813. 59Ibid. 60JAS to AMFR, letter, 12 January 1886, Fonds Anglais, 248, ff. 153–4. 61AMFR to JAS, letter, 17 January 1886, Fonds Anglais, 248, f. 137. 62AMFR to VL, letter, 13 March [no year], Fonds Anglais, 248, ff. 2 and 3. 63KF to WR, letter, 29 May 1949, Symonds Family Papers, DM 911/74 . 64Zorn, 12. 65KF to WR, letter, 19 May 1949, Symonds Family Papers, DM 911/71. 66I'm not alone in my perplexity. Colby, 50, describes Symonds as “Bisexual but with a strong inclination for his own gender, he apparently resented Mary's seeming transference of the hero worship she had for him to Violet [Paget].” In contrast, Brown traces the antagonism between Symonds and Lee to his feeling that she had borrowed his ideas on the Carmina Burana, as he wrote to Harvard Professor Thomas S. Perry: “she pitchforks the slightest hint into the robust & original but rather hasty & coarsely-grinding mill of her brain”, quoted in Brown, 188. 67Prins, “Lady's Greek”, 599. 68Dowling, 2. 69Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds, 281. 70Belsey, 6. 76Quoted in Felman, 35. 71Pellegrini, 622. 72Berlant, 20. 73Brooks, xiii–5. 74Zembylas, 332 and 338. 75Bracher, 128. 77Symonds's fledgling academic career as a fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford (1861), was cut short following false investigations of impropriety by a student he was coaching in philosophy. As Grosskurth notes: “While, in effect, he was completely exonerated [by the general investigation undertaken by Magdalen authorities] a certain ambiguity remained, and Dr Symonds [his father] was highly disturbed by the verdict.” Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds, 67. 79Plato, Symposium, 55. 80Prins, Victorian Sappho, 43. 78AMFR to JAS, letter, 1 December [c. 1879], Fonds Anglais, 248, f. 16. 81Prins, “Lady's Greek”, 598. 82And implicitly, taking on the erômenos role, see Halperin, 139, for a discussion of the erastes (lover)/erômenos (beloved) hierarchy which structured pederastic relations in ancient Greece. 83Devos, 122. 84Felman, 30. 85Symonds, 913. 87AMFR to JAS, letter, Sunday, 21 December [c.1884], Fonds Anglais, 248, ff. 141–2. 92Ibid., 928. 95JAS to HE, letter, 17 January 1893, Brady, John Addington Symonds, 261. I am grateful to Sean Brady for generously allowing me to view the manuscript. 86Vicinus, Intimate Friends, 154. 88Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds, 223. 89Frye, 172. 90Colby, 75, dates their meeting to July 1882. 91Symonds, 813. 93Ibid., 813. 94Gay, 319. 96Zembylas, 338. 97Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 35. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSally Newman Sally Newman is a lecturer in Gender Studies and History at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.