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<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>One really can't be someone else, and even the dullest child knows it. Daft!</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif><EM>Our Mutual Friend </EM>is a life's work, I think. I've read it, seen the various BBC versions, and now I think I'll listen to it. It is very very powerful and very very strange.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>As for Hawthorne, you know the American character (not to mention the Brit) is formed on Puritan scruple. It makes people like V. Woolf laugh at us for being lower middle class Prots, which we are.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>I would like to point out, however, the hottttt literary bromance between Hawthorne and Melville. I always suspected Melville of being gay, from page one of Moby Dick, and still believe Captain Vere (Billy Budd) is Hawthorne. Do you know of this extraodinary letter Melville wrote Hawthorne, which caused Hawthorne to end the relationship?</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif><A href="http://www.melville.org/letter7.htm">http://www.melville.org/letter7.htm</A></FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif></FONT></FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Puritans run hott and deep.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif></FONT></FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>How would you, as a grown-up Hawthorne, have dealt with Melville's declaration of love?</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif></FONT></FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Take care</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Jeannette Smyth</P>
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<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px">-----Original Message----- <BR>From: "Stuart N. Clarke" <STUART.N.CLARKE@BTINTERNET.COM><BR>Sent: Sep 13, 2012 12:31 PM <BR>To: vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu <BR>Subject: [Vwoolf] De gustibus ... <BR><BR><ZZZHTML><ZZZHEAD>
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<DIV>I remember at primary school being asked to write an essay with the subject If you weren’t who you are, who would you like to be? A remarkably stupid concept, I thought at the time, and still think so. Of course, I had no idea how to answer it. I hated stuff like Paint whatever scene you’d like to. Child-centred education – pah! Thank goodness we didn’t have much of *that*.</DIV>
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<DIV>Struggling away, my answer was Hawthorne. God knows how I managed to spin it out. Much of my knowledge of Greek myths is founded on Tanglewood Tales and A Wonder Book. Bet not many British people can say that.</DIV>
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<DIV>So, it was an intense disappointment to read The Scarlet Letter in about 1993. Of course, I couldn’t understand the beginning, and once I got going I found it deeply boring. I finished it, tho’.</DIV>
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<DIV>Whether I’ll manage my second reading of “Our Mutual Friend”, which I’m currently engaged on, I don’t know. (I remember nothing of my first reading.) I feel that this is going to be my last Dickens, unless I reread Great Expectations &/or Bleak House, which I am enthusiastic about. I do find Dickens unsympathetic. </DIV>
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<DIV>And so, I have to agree with Virginia, if she really did think this – I preferred You Know Me Al – even tho’ I didn’t understand all of it, being written, as you know, in a foreign language – to The Scarlet Letter.</DIV>
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<DIV>Stuart</DIV>
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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=jeannette_smyth@earthlink.net href="mailto:jeannette_smyth@earthlink.net">jeannette smyth</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, September 13, 2012 6:02 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=harish.trivedi@gmail.com href="mailto:harish.trivedi@gmail.com">Harish Trivedi</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu">vwoolf listserv</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vwoolf] Leslie Stephen</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>My literary tastes are, God knows, not infallible. Then again, I don't make my living as a literary journalist. But even <EM>I </EM>know that Hawthorne is <EM>The Man.</EM> Recently re-read <EM>Scarlet Letter</EM> thinking I'd probably not feel it, the way one can no longer feel <EM>Anna Karenina</EM> (not least on account of Tolstoy's bone-deep misogynism). I was in tears at the end of it. Tears for Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale! From this withered and hardened old heart.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Interesting to think Stephen was blind to Dickens (also more and more prescient, sublime, Marxist, even) and Woolf to Hawthorne. Thanks to all for these insights.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Take care,</FONT></FONT></FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT size=2><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Jeannette Smyth<BR></P></FONT></FONT></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px">-----Original Message----- <BR>From: Harish Trivedi <HARISH.TRIVEDI @GMAIL.COM><BR>Sent: Sep 12, 2012 10:26 AM <BR>To: jeannette smyth <JEANNETTE_SMYTH @EARTHLINK.NET><BR>Cc: Eleanor McNees <ELEANOR.MCNEES @DU.EDU>, vwoolf listserv <VWOOLF @LISTS.SERVICE.OHIO-STATE.EDU><BR>Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Leslie Stephen <BR><BR>
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<DIV>Yes, indeed, let's not to be too correct or presentist. To see LS just as a father is rather like seeing VW just as a daughter. And to see him just as Mr Ramsay is like seeing VW just as a woman with a tendecy to go 'mad' from time to time, while disregarding completely what each of them wrote. Patriarchy here seems well met by some shades of Feminism.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Of LS's DNB essays, one that has not stood the test of time too well is that on Dickens, who is now 200 years old but was still (luke)warm is his grave when LS wrote that entry. As I recall, he said something to the effect that D must be reckoned great if popularity with the semi-literates <BR>was to be regarded as proof of greatness. Very sniffy -- but hardly more so than VW on American Literature, where she prized Ring Lardner (!) above Hawthorne. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>All said and done, she was her father's daughter.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Harish Trivedi </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR> </DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On 12 September 2012 20:26, jeannette smyth <SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:jeannette_smyth@earthlink.net" target=_blank>jeannette_smyth@earthlink.net</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
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<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT face=arial,sans-serif>Noel Annan's bio is also enlightening; she seems to have inherited a great deal of his physical toughness, Stephen family mental high/low, and courage. She also inherited his place at the pinnacle of literary journalism and atheism. As an American I wondered for years how she found herself at the nexus of such a powerful group of friends, until I realized they'd all been friends for five generations, since the Clapham sect. This doesn't happen in America.</FONT></FONT></P>
<P><A href="http://www.amazon.com/Leslie-Stephen-Noel-Gilroy-Annan/dp/0226021068/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347461564&sr=1-4" target=_blank>http://www.amazon.com/Leslie-Stephen-Noel-Gilroy-Annan/dp/0226021068/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347461564&sr=1-4</A></P>
<P> </P>
<P>Don't some of his DNB essays still stand?</P>
<P> </P>
<P>Take care,</P>
<P>Jeannette Smyth</P>
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<P><FONT color=#000000><FONT face=arial,sans-serif><BR> </FONT></FONT></P>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(0,0,255) 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px">-----Original Message----- <BR>From: Eleanor McNees <U></U><BR>Sent: Sep 10, 2012 1:19 PM <BR>To: "<A href="mailto:vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu" target=_blank>vwoolf@lists.service.ohio-state.edu</A>" <U></U><BR>Subject: [Vwoolf] Leslie Stephen <BR><BR><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U><U></U>
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<P class=MsoNormal>Dear Woolf Colleagues,<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal>If one takes the time to read Leslie Stephen’s essays over the course of his life as well as his many entries in the Dictionary of National Biography which he initiated and edited for over a decade, one finds a rather different persona from the one so often criticized as a tyrannical and maudlin father. In addition his letters in the two-volume Bicknell edition present a far more human version. Woolf herself acknowledged especially in her retrospective piece for <I>The Times</I> how significant his literary influence on her was. <U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Regards,<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Eleanor<U></U><U></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><U></U><U></U> </P>
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<P class=MsoNormal><B><SPAN style="COLOR: rgb(99,36,35)">Eleanor McNees<U></U><U></U></SPAN></B></P>
<P class=MsoNormal>Associate Dean<U></U><U></U></P>
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