hello there
Miss Davis, is it
allow me to tell you –
please do not speak to me like that, sir
I can see your wedding ring
oh, this?
no, no, no
you’ve got the wrong idea
I mean, yes, I’m married
but I’ve already written four books about how the Church should let me leave my wife
I see
one of them is called THE ROD OF PUNISHMENT
so
you know
this ring doesn’t really count
mm
on account of how much I hate being married to her
GIRLS
girls
come here at once
what is it, Father
I have hit upon it
I have hit upon it at the last
I have found your occupation
are we to be married, Father?
or sent to school?
You can all sit here in the dark and read to me
now that I am blind I shall need readers
and I already know all of your names
so I won’t need to learn any new ones
start with Heraclitus, in the original Greek
Father, we don’t know Greek
yes, but I do, simpletons
I’ll simply throw whatever’s closest to hand at you when you pronounce something wrong
and thus you will improve
Girls
is that someone at the door?
yes, Father
well, answer it
it might be my new wife
what?
yes
I married Elizabeth last month
when did this happen?
when were you planning on telling us about her?
oh, I wasn’t, really
odds are she’ll end up dying in childbirth anyways
like both of your mothers did
so I figured I’d just let things take their natural course
girls
GIRLS
yes, Father?
what is it?
COME IN HERE AT ONCE
I want to dictate ten thousand lines of verse to you
about how cool the Devil isn’t
Mallory does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man…
Housman would have said this, if he knew Mallory…
Bernard Black voice: “Milton, Milton, you’re really dreadful, and your wives are unfulfilled and alienated…”
Weirdly enough, this is wildly accurate. Milton was kinda a dick. I mean, Brilliant, but complete asshole. /official academic opinion.
It isn’t weird at all, I know my Milton and was historically accurate on purpose.
You are an A+ Milton Scholar and I will cite you to my students later when they’re like “Noooo, milton wasn’t a jerk…”
He really was this bad to his daughters. When I studied him in college my professor said, “His art justified his actions”, which to me seemed the ultimate excuse for mantitlement
That is always the excuse for mantitlement. When it comes to art at least. Like, is it too much to ask that people be creative AND nice? Similarly for tortured geniuses: they were miserable, but damn did that misery produce something I like to read so… worth it!
On that latter point, I read an article a while ago about the fact that Forster stopped writing novels once he met the love of his life and was happy. I was totally expecting it to talk about what a shame that his happiness deprived us of more well written novels about middle class angst – imagine my surprise when it actually said ‘Even if misery does produce great art, that doesn’t make the misery good. If you wish Forster had remained unfulfilled just so you could have another book to read, you’re a dick’ (I’m paraphrasing).
It’s just so ingrained in our culture that we ought to value the conditions that produce ~great works~ without looking at what that attitude actually entails i.e. excusing dirtbag behaviour or actively wishing mental health problems and unhappiness on people. Awful attitude.
Seriously, having read Forster SO MUCH throughout my teens, like, ALL I WANT IS FOR HIM TO BE HAPPY. Literally every novel he wrote is “please have the courage to go past your personal repression and limitations to find love and fulfillment with another person.” And it makes me happy that he did! I would be sad if there were a whole extra boatload of “repressed British people muddle things up while searching for happiness” novels by Forster.
I once read a series of letters from Forster to a poet in Ireland during, iirc, World War I. Eventually he sent a copy of the manuscript for Maurice to him in the most blatant form of literary flirtation I’ve ever seen in real life letter form. Sadly, that apparently did not gain him anything more than a NO HOMO letter, so ever since then I’ve felt a teensy bit sorry for him. It’s much better that he be happy with someone.
The world can do without Art if it has to arise from shitty conditions or behavior.
I think Forster comes across as just so genuinely nice that you can’t help liking him and wanting good things for him. But he had a pretty good time of things all in all, lived in nice rooms in King’s College from his 40s onwards and had friends round and did very little else. The picture of contentment.
Ah, good. I don’t actually know that much about Forster’s personal life beyond the obvious but when I was reading through the letters, it was honestly like reading a book, hoping that it would all work out, and I was sorely disappointed that the ‘let me show you my special manuscript that I’ve only shown to a few people I really trust’ move didn’t work out. So I’m glad he had a content life anyway.
One of my high school teachers was friends with Forster when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the late fifties. And no, my teacher wasn’t just name-dropping — I found out much later that he’s mentioned in Forster’s _Commonplace Book_ as a friend.
Seriously, though! I mean, I know that there’s a school of thought that there’s a lot of virtue in ~difficult~ characters and ~difficult~ writers, and I don’t entirely disagree. But that being said – man. I love Forster, and Eliot too, because they just seem like they would be the kindest, smartest, and most sensible friends. And I think there’s a whoooole lot of virtue in reading their novels about bumbling, flawed people who are mostly trying to do the right thing.
It really is. Also I will now stop worrying about whether my partner has produced plays at a slower rate since we got together. He is definitely happy, and has been doing ridiculous amounts of musicking. My quilting productivity has probably gone up, too, but then quilting is a much happier activity than writing for me.
Forster story: during a uni seminar on Class and Conflict in the 19th Century Industrial Novel, when we were studying Howards End, an elderly woman in the class said, “I don’t know whether Forster ever married…” and I offhandedly said, “Oh, he was gay.” She said, “Really? Are you *sure*?” in a way that strongly implied, “You think everyone’s gay!” So I replied, “Wrote a gay novel, co-wrote the libretto to a gay opera, generally known as gay…yep, I’m sure.” He’s not one of the ones we’re unsure about, for heaven’s sake. The tutor was trying not to smirk at the time.
Apparently Forster wrote bitchy letters to Britten when they were putting together Billy Budd, complaining that the music to Claggart’s monologue wasn’t gay enough.
Apparently some people also think it was OK for William S Borroughs to have killed Joan Vollmer because it made him a better writer. >:-(
RAGING. I think everyone would be better off if Burroughs hadn’t existed tbh.
Aw man, I feel like there could have been SO much more about him dicking on the bishops and his spat with Herbert Palmer over Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Plus his first marriage was basically:
Babe, marry me! Our dads are like mates or something they’ll be totally cool with it
– Um yeah, sure. I guess …
[1 week later]
Um babe, what’s this crucifix doing here? We can’t have that.
– What do you mean? I’m Catholic. You know I’m Catholic, right?
… No.
[1 week later]
Babe, where are you? Are you coming back??
Oh, that book was about how cool the devil isn’t? That makes a lot more sense, church-wise. I thought it was about an industrious chap who made the most of a bad situation after realizing the poorest free person has it better than the most pampered slave. I may have read Ayn Rand’s version.
Oh god! AYN RAND’S PARADISE LOST, YOU GUYS!!!!
OMG, the divorce essay is amazing(ly awful.) Mallory’s version would have saved me so much time!
The divorce essay ground my gears. I had a student go on and on about how great a pioneer Milton was, championing no-fault divorce, and I asked if he had any ideas what the financial implication of Doctrine of Discipline and Divorce would have been for women who didn’t have the employment or educational resources of their male peers. Student then got really quiet.
It’s horrible but bits of it are kind of romantic. It makes it even worse that apparently he could imagine a legit companionate marriage for a moment or two there, and yet was still so awful to the women in his life.
“I’ll simply throw whatever’s closest to hand at you when you pronounce something wrong
and thus you will improve”
Best worst pedagogy y/y’
“about how cool the devil isn’t”
you keep telling yourself that Milton. setting up Satan’s speeches in parallel to those of greek heroes is definitely going to make people think you hate him…
Curse you Ortberg. Now I can never think of Milton without imagining his prose being read in the voice of Rick from “Rick and Morty.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! I only regret that i have but one upvote to give to this comment!
It's the Victorian equivalent of OH JOHN RINGO, NO!
The only thing I don’t love about this is that I saw it now and not five years ago when I was taking my Milton class in college.
There is no non-dirtbag Milton. He is full dirtbag.
Now there's a character where you fervently wish she'd had the chance to go to university. Chances are she'd have ended up in a miserable affair with a married lecturer, but at least she'd have got out of it before too long. I want her to go and study divinity and become best friends with Sara Maitland or something.