Wednesday 26 April 2017

Review: The Sufferings/Sorrows of Young Werther



[I read the Corngold translation, which uses the word ‘sufferings’ rather than ‘sorrows’. I found it an easy to read, an unobtrusive translation with useful notes and appendices.]


I was trying to write this review in the style of an alt-right numbnuts, something along the line of; ’special-snowflake and general over-emotional cuck shoots himself’ but I couldn’t get the hang of the language and tone and I think it would have become tiring very quickly.
My imaginary alt-right reviewer does have a point though, Young Werther is a particularly irritating blend of ego and fragility that makes him difficult company. He frequently talks about his own exceptional nature; how he feels deeper than other people, how he appreciates the natural world more than most, how he might be derided as a drunkard or a madman but that was always the fate of special people in this cruel world. 

He declares at the beginning that he is too happy to make art and as he gets sadder he seeks out thunder-storms, crags and other sublime places to mooch. He marvels at his own notions and thoughts, even if they are as hackneyed as the notion that life sometimes feels like a dream. What’s more, he actively dislikes most other people, deriding them as ordinary, boring and conformist. He’s the kind of person who would nowadays refer to other people as ‘sheeple’.
In other words, he’s a twat.
And yet…
Compare him to the similarly emotional character of Harley from Henry Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling’. Harley is also very emotional but he frequently poured his soul (and his unending vat of tears) in pity for someone else. Harley eventually dies of self-pity but for most of the book, he is driven by a too-deep involvement in everyone else whereas Werther only has a deep involvement in himself. Werther is nastier, bitchier and constantly drawing everything back to his own specialness - essentially he’s me at university.

I’m sure he is many people at university, no wonder this took off with young people. Werther may be a twat but it’s a twattishness many of us have shared, and hopefully grown out of. He’s light years ahead of Harley when it comes to being relatable.
I find comparing ‘The Sufferings/Sorrows of Young Werther’ and ‘The Man of Feeling’ interesting. Mackenzie wrote his novel first, creating a sensitive, emotional man whose story is revealed by scrips and scraps saved by an editor who had been using it for gun-wadding. Goethe also wrote his novel using the frame device of an editor, most of the book being told in scraps of letters Werther writes (but never any of the replies) and a last section where the editor has been asking witnesses to put the story together. In the first book, the frame serves to distance us from the main story but the editor of Werther brings it to plausible life. It makes it more real. 
Similarly, the plot. Harley spends most of his adventure collecting examples of other people’s problems in order to  exercise his sentiments on before he is turned down by his love, shrinks away and dies. Whereas, Werther meets Lotte and instantly starts obsessing even though he knows she is taken. 

He tries to be a useful person but he feels like a phoney and finds himself back in Lotte’s town where she is now married. When he kisses her and she finally tells him that it’s enough; he methodically settles his debts, writes a letter designed to make Lotte feel guilty, dresses in an outfit with emotional significance and then shoots himself. No fading away for Werther, he dies in a passive-aggressive orgy of ‘I bet you’ll be sad when I’m dead’. This is not a sentimental novel like ‘The Man of Feeling’, it’s sturm und drang, storm and stress - there’s blood as well as tears.
What I find remarkable about Werther’s suicide is the clinical detail the editor goes into. We learn that he shot himself whilst sitting down, that someone had heard the noise and seen the flash but dismissed it and that he was found bleeding the next morning, with a bit of his brain hanging out. Werther is still alive, twitching and paralysed for several hours before dying. It’s horrific - and it’s all true.
The details of Werther’s suicide. From the witness of the noise; his position when he shot himself, the lengthy and slow death, even what books were on the table were all from a letter Goethe received describing the suicide of his friend Jerusalem. Almost all of the details, including the yellow waistcoat and blue frockcoat ensemble that was to become the de-facto uniform of young late-eighteenth century men, were taken from the real incident. This means Goethe would later seed the outfit into the novel so that Werther could wear what his friend wore and for a reason.
Even more remarkable is that the letter about the suicide was given to Werther by his friend, Johann Christian Kestner, a man who had a young wife called Lotte, who Goethe was in love with. The core love story of the book is also basically true. Werther (Goethe) fell in love with Lotte (Lotte) who married Albert (Kestner) - although, in real life, the three managed to become a tight friendship unit. Goethe even met Lotte when he was taking someone else to a ball, just as Werther met his Lotte. Lotte even had dark eyes like her fictional counterpart. 
The main thing Goethe did when writing the book was link his love for Lotte and his friend’s suicide and supply suitable histrionics to link the two.
Which is where we go back to the beginning of the review - Werther may be a twat but he is a real twat, because he is essentially young Goethe. It feels true because so much in the book was true, and it resonated so well with dispossessed eighteenth-century young people because it managed to be utterly real and grounded while it still reaches up to grasp the beauty and the danger of the sublime. Werther’s love is both ludicrous and magnificent, his sufferings both ego-centric idiocy and intensely painful and his suicide is both glorious and sordid. It is sentimental stretched to the sublime.
I found the book a memorable experience, but like the sand that Lotte kept slipping into her letters, not without irritation.





Wednesday 19 April 2017

Review: The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster


I don’t think we’ve ever focused our attention over the pond before, but this is a (late) eighteenth century novel written in the newly formed United States of America. Written by Hannah Webster Foster, an early journalist for Boston papers who wrote two novels; this and ‘The Boarding School’ (which is not dissimilar to Sarah Fielding’s ‘The Governess’). She was not revealed to be the author of ‘The Coquette’ until after her death. The subject matter was a little… sensitive.
The novel tells the story of Eliza Wharton, a young woman who dallies with a young man, runs away to have the child stillborn in a far away tavern before dying herself - so far, so Richardson - but the novel was heavily based on a real woman, and one Hannah Webster Foster knew. It’s hard to know if the anonymity was for using the death of an acquaintance for novel-fodder, or if it’s because the novel is sympathetic to her.
We start with a bang. Her fiancĂ© has died and Eliza is delighted. It was dull tending his sickbed and he wasn’t really her choice but her parents. Now she can have a bit of fun before she settles down.
She goes to the house of her happily married cousin, Mrs RIchman. There she meets the Reverend Boyer and Major Sandford - and here we have the conflict for the first half of the book. Boyer is a nice, respectable man who will probably prove to be a good husband, but he’s a little staid. Sandford is a charming swaggerer who entertains “a poor solitary being, who needs some amusement beyond what I can supply myself.” The two men try and out-compete for Eliza in their own manners.
At first she finds the boys fighting over her as a bit of a chore. She includes a humblebrag that could almost be said Count D’Elmont in ‘Love in Excess’, “These bewitching charms of mine have a tendency to keep my mind in a state of perturbation.” Though, in a world where the slightest mis-step in communication between the sexes can cause real problems, I suppose it is a genuine problem to have bewitching charms.
As the novel progresses, it seems very clear that Bowyer would be steady and kind. He expresses his respect for Eliza and his fondness for her. It’s also clear that he doesn’t really know her nor listen to her. He is surprised at her jollyness when in jolly company, finding her smiling and mild flirting to be unseemly. Although Eliza’s friends and family all like him, and he isn’t a terrible person, I really grew to dislike him for his arrogance and smugness.
Sandford on the other hand is a cad of the Lovelace school. He is looking around for a quick shag or a rich fortune but Eliza is too careful for the first and too poor for the second. However, as the book goes on, it does seem like he loves her, or at the very least thinks he loves her despite not listening to her. Although I couldn’t like him, he at least had passion for Eliza, and if it wasn’t for the need for money, he could have grown a decent man.
And this for me is what made the first half of the book such entertaining reading. Eliza has a simply crap choice. The book is called ‘The Coquette’ and as much as she scolds herself for her coquettish tendencies she never actually seems to have any. Eliza is a pretty straight shooter, she tells both men that she wants a time away from relationships and that she just wants to laugh and have fun for a bit before settling down - but neither man listens to her. It’s so frustrating. Bowyer is not prepared to wait for her or join in with the fun, and Sandford is always trying to dive into her genitals. 
The first half, with letters from Eliza, Bowyer and Sandford to their respective friends is enormously entertaining. Webster-Foster is very good at retelling the same events from different perspectives in ways that are both interesting and revealing. She also does a brilliant job of showing Eliza’s innate reasonableness and how grossly all of her intentions are misunderstood and misrepresented by the two dense men in her life.
In the second half, Bowyer goes off with disgust at her enjoying Sandford’s company and Sandford gets married to a decent, pleasant and rich woman who he feels very sorry for cheating on. It is revealed that Eliza has run away, pregnant with Sandford’s baby and she dies after giving birth to a stillborn child as the real woman did.
The second half doesn’t work as well. Eliza spends the last third of the book in abject fits of melancholy and the tone of the book starts to turn and blame her for her misfortunes. Also, the Eliza of the first half of the book was fun-loving but sensible and the transition into someone who would get pregnant with Sandford’s baby behind his new wife’s back is simply not shown.
That said, this is an engaging book which presents a really interesting character in Eliza, who is a free-spirit that nobody listens to or takes all that seriously who rubs against and finally is destroyed by the rigidness of her society.
Also - it contains the Holy Grail of Epistolary fiction, a letter that actually reads like a letter someone might send someone else and for that, it’s worth a few hours of anyone’s time. 





Thursday 6 April 2017

Emma Hamilton: Seduction & Celebrity - at the National Maritime Museum



As a child, I went to two exhibitions at the National Maritime Museums in Greenwich that changed my life a little. The first was 1992’s ‘Pirates: Fact or Fiction’ that launched me into a lifelong obsession with the salt-soaked ne’er-do-wells and the legends and myths that have grown around them. 1994’s ‘Wreck of the Titanic’ was the first big exhibition of recovered artefacts, and I was quite driven by Titanic-Mania until the 1997 film shook me out of it.
Last year I went to the ‘Pepys: Fire and Revolution’ exhibit, which was interesting but a little weak-sauce considering that my Pepys-fancying was really some way gone then - and last week, I went to see ‘Emma Hamilton: Seduction & Celebrity’. If you are reading this before the 17th of April, can go an see it and haven’t - do.
I was a little aware of her story outside of Nelson but this exhibition told it so well, supported by a wealth of pictures and letters that brought me through on a surprisingly emotional journey.
We start in London in the late 1770s and the 13 year old Emy Lyon is a servant to a musical family. By the time she is 15, she is out on the streets - possibly lodging with bawd Mrs Kelly and possibly working with Quack, William Humphrey in his Temple of Health with the renowned ‘Celestial Bed’. This section is amply illustrated with cartoons, a beautifully detailed painting of Covent Garden, the semi naked picture of Lydia by Matthew William Peters (with come-to-bed-eyes) and a copy of the Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies. 
Emma was taken up by one keeper, until she became pregnant and was passed over to another. To avoid destitution she had to give her baby up, change her name to Emma Hart and live a sober and chaste life. In this room there are her account books and some letters and we get the first sounds of her voice. This is also the Romney room.
While under the protection of Greville, she sat for a portrait with Romney. He was quite taken. The room is full of pictures of Emma. I overheard another visitor commenting that he’d never seen so many pictures of one person in the same room. The effect is striking. Both artist and model work together to create images that are warm, expressive and very alluring. I was a little taken myself.
Then Greville had to marry and Emma was passed to his widowed uncle Hamilton, who lived in Naples. He described her in a letter as his ‘delightful object’. Having grown attached to Greville, she was deeply unhappy and felt very betrayed but her move to Naples is the beginning of a golden era.
Because Emma was not an idiot, she may have been uneducated but she proved a that she had an unsurpassed appetite for learning - gaining French as well as the correct Italian dialect - she also studied the classics, Hamilton’s great interest, and the two of them studied the finds coming out of Herculaneum and Pompeii with delight. It wasn’t long before Hamilton was praising her for her knowledge as well as her beauty.
In this time she created her ‘Attitudes’, a series of poses and postures inspired by classical and biblical art. These poses were then transitioned by graceful movements of her shawl, those movements accentuated by her loose dress. Where she had been a model to be painted, now she brought those paintings into a kind of living sculpture - it was a big hit. As well as lots of different drawings and descriptions of the postures, there is a projected performance based on them. It’s a eerie experience watching. 
Emma married and became Lady Hamilton, projecting her into orbit of the Queen of Naples (and sister of Marie Antoinette). Her friendship with the Queen, her easy command of languages and her careful treatment of people meant that Emma had great influence in the court. So much so, that she arranged Nelson’s fitting out there and organised the celebrations when he returned from the Nile. When the French attacked, it was Emma who organised the Royal flight on Nelson’s ships. She also sent those ships to bring food to Malta and was the first woman to gain the cross of Malta in the process. She was also involved in the brutal repercussions against the French when they gained control of Naples again.
By this time, she had fallen for Nelson but also with Hamilton and when the three came back to England, it was this scandal that followed her home, rather than triumph.  She set up a home in ‘Paradise Merton’ for her and Nelson, as well as Horatia, the daughter that neither could publicly acknowledge as theirs. This part of the exhibition has a lovely set of letters that Emma and Nelson wrote to each other as he was at sea for two years. She writes him poems and he writes phrases like, ‘I have been the world around and never saw your equal’.
Scandal floated around them, a comic picture has Nelson boasting that he could put ‘such a broadside’ into her - but Emma concentrated on making a comfortable house that boasted of their joint achievements. The china was full of victories and there was a bit of French warship by the front door. People still flocked to her, she had Princes and the Prince Regent round for tea (though Nelson warned Emma to watch out for ol’Prinny).
Emma’s downfall started with Nelson’s death. Hours beforehand, he wrote a codicil to his will (displayed in the exhibition) pleading to the country who’s fight he was to fight, that they look after Emma. We are also shown his ponytail, cut off on his deathbed and given to her. The government was very happy to give Nelson’s brother and estranged wife a pension but they were never going to give anything to a mistress.
Emma tried to keep in society but that cost money and soon she had to sell Paradise Merton and treasured keepsakes of Nelson and her successes until she was thrown into the King’s Bench prison - they have her entry ‘Dame Emma Hamilton’ in the log book. 
Broken and bitter, she fled to Calais and died aged 49 of amoebic dysentery.

And that’s the story. Emma managed to gain herself an education, carve out an artistic identity, negotiate in world-level politics and in all ways excel as much as she could - but she was a woman and that left her on shaky foundations that were eventually to topple her.
It is a wonderful exhibition and a great story (and if you can’t go, the book that goes with the exhibition is a gorgeous thing - full of glorious pictures).




…On a side note, I also went to the Queen’s House in Greenwich. It’s a beautiful building, created by Inigo Jones with classical form in mind, has a perfectly cubed hallway and a stunning set of stairs. Now it’s mainly being used as a gallery. Not much that grabbed me except the latter portrait of fat Pepys and a Hogarth I’d not seen before that features Trump the pug wearing a gentleman’s wig. It’s free though, and I recommend you go just to see that hallway.