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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 1, 1987)
7 - LAM BDA RISING BOOK REPORT lllliwtration (rom th« cover) A YEAR W ITH THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN, edited by Elizabeth Mavor (Penguin, 238 pp. $5.95). In 1778, two young Irishwomen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, defied their families as well as social convention by "eloping” to the Langollen valley of Northern Wales. This is their story as revealed by these selection from Eleanor Butler’s journal. A t first the journal seems rather ordin ary with references to the weather and what they ate for dinner, but soon it unfolds into a loving account of a life well-lived with a cher ished companion. Readers will delight at Eleanor’s reference to Sarah as "M y Beloved.” The phrase may seem stilted to our modern ears, but the tone is sincere and therefore refreshing. In fact, of all the diaries I ’ve read, this stands out as the only which focuses on a life-long loving relationship. It is also the oldest diary I have read, and as such it provides an excellent protrait of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The bigg est surprise is the true liesure with which they led their lives. Eleanor and her beloved take morning and afternoon walks, enjoy long evenings of reading and drawing, and ease through days (in her words) " o f the most delicious retirement." (Oh, I AM jealous!). Eleanor and Sarah extend their loving concern to an assorted menagerie of dogs, cats, and cows. Eleanor records their concern for a lost cat, a cholicy horse, and the difficult calving of their favorite cow. In contrast, Eleanor’s loving concern reaches compara tively few people. She does not waste any sympathy on wandering gypsy beggars, way ward servants, or uncooperative shop keepers. Similarly, she spends little time chronicling the larger historical events of the day, since they never actually have impact on her life with Sarah which is obviously her primary concern. The result is a sort of his torical sampler with such events as the Napo leonic Wars, the decline of cotton man ufacturing, and the beginnings of the indus trial revolution embroidered in with the threads of their lives. For those who love a story of a roman tic relaionship, this is a good and rare find. But best of all, this journal is for those who love the romance of an age past-for it is rich with the imagery of bird song, brook ripple, wind and “ mizzling rain,” the scents of laven der and sweet briar. -Deborah Kachelries LEAVES FROM A VICTORIAN DIARY, by Edward Leeves (Alison Press/Secker & Warburg Limited, 126 PP. $19.95). One of the major problems of being gay has always been the feeling of isolation, l b whom do you talk when things go wrong. Nowadays, we get on the phone and call our nearest and dearest. One hundred years ago, it seems many people wrote all of their inner most feelings in their journals. By reading those journals, we discover that many things never really change. LEAVES FROM A VICTORIAN D IARY chronicles one year (1849-1850) in the life of Edward Leeves, an upper class Bristish expatriate living in Venice. When an immin ent invasion by Austrian troops ti<reatens his quiet existence, he journeys home to his native England where he meets, loves, and ultimately loses Mr. John Brand, a young member of the Royal Horse Guards. Though leeves himself evidently destroyed a portion of the diary (Sept. 5 to Dec. 15) in his grief, we soon learn the details of the all too brief affair. After a few weeks of intense happiness, Leeves makes a brief visit to the country with the intention of meeting his "darling boy” when he returns. Three weeks later, his life is shattered when Jack fails to appear at their reunion. Visiting Jack’s barracks, he learns that the young Jack Brand was a victim of the cholera epidemic then sweeping Europe. The remaining year in the diary is the por trait of a man consumed by a grief which polite society could not understand. Of primary interest to readers with a passion for biography and history, this first (llltMtratkMi (rom Urn c o w l hand view of life in the mid-nineteenth cen tury can be quite enlightening. The parallel between cholera and A ID S is inescapable. Leeves notes that according to the London Times of December 17, 1849 “ In Paris the most fatal month...was June, when 5,769 peri shed. In London...September, when 6,644 fell victim.” History and historical paralles aside, Leeves teaches us how not to deal with grief. Though one must sympathize with Leeves because of his private grief which he could not share, he comes across as a stereotypical, melodramatic Victorian who wallows gloriously and emotionallly in self-pity. Albeit not light reading, this diary is an interesting window on the past. •Paul Webb THE GODDESS LETTERS: The Myth of Demeter & Persephone, retold by Carol Orlock (St. Martin’s Press, 220 pp. $15.95). CONVERSATION W ITH MY ELDERS, by Boze Hadleigh (St. Martin’s Press, 209 pp. $14.95). Ever the graceful and mannerly chap, Mr. Quentin Crisp conveys this book to the gentle reader with a polished and ever so slightly ticklish foreward. From there on, it’s every gay man and lesbian for themselves as idols and demi-gods turn aside from their carnal pursuits to permit yet another probe of their often palatial closets, and in the process thrash about their inner sancta like Orson Welles looking for his magic decoder ring in CITIZEN KANE. Sal Mineo, Luchino V isconti, Cecil Bea ton, George Cukor, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rock Hudson, the bric-a-brac of great names dropping and clattering across the oak parquetry almost obscures the rather more astounding undercurrent which is the great value of this series of interviews. Each of these six astonishingly successful gay men has a specific set of reasons for not coming out that, when examined apart from their fame, may provide at least a partial framework for addressing this highly politicized personal issue. The subjects are quite frank in dis cussing their professional and personal lives, but this frankness is not born of an extra degree of trust imparted to the author, Mr. Hadleigh. Instead, they all know that, as Rock points out, no one would print these revela tions while they were alive. They wouldn’t be printed because no one would believe them. Also, Hadleigh informs us that the general media has perpetrated a "gentleman’s agreement” and thus quashed the highly con troversial truth for so long, that coming out in print becomes a political act denied to these receptacles of the average American’s dreams. The utopian dream that has shaped this book and so much of our community is also embraced by Rock who agrees that under the right condition, he would have considered doing a strictly gay part in a strictly gay movie. Rock and Hadleigh both assert that if some us come out others will follow, and our numbers and the aggregate weight of our accomplishments will earn us a place of resp ect. A beautiful dream it is, but why doesn't Mr. Hadleigh declare himself in his introduc tion? -Jack Garman Next to your BULFINCH’S MYTH OLOGY, just to the left of your D ’AU- LAIRE’S ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF GREEK MYTHS, make a space. And in it, lovingly squeeze this little gem, which is for those of you who collect Mary Renault, or those of you who call the constellations by name. The myth of Demeter, the goddess of vegetation and the protector of marriage, and her daughter Persephone (also spelled Pro serpine), who is abducted by Hades, the god of the underworld, is one of the most familiar. When Hades kidnaps the young goddess, Demeter’s grief is such that the earth grows brown and lifeless. Thus the ancients explained winter. In brief, a compromise is reached whereupon Persephone is given special dispensation to return to the upper realms six months out of every year. Usually, no one is allowed to return from Hades. However, at the end of this reunion of mother and daughter, in which spring and summer reign, Persephone must return to her dread lord. Fall and winter sweep down upon the earth as Demeter grieves, and Persephone rules as Queen of Hades. Orlock has rendered the myth into the form of missives, diary entries as it were, between mother and daughter. During the course of this interesting exchange, in which deities behave with human resolve, frus tration and a bevy of other foil, many tales and myths which we have heard in childhood come brilliantly back to life. The book jacket brags of THE GODDESS LETTERS that it exhibits "a more subtle feminism than is found in most of today’s fiction.” It is at once more and less. 7b be sure, the turnabout from goddess to human matters little in Orlock’s insights into relationships between mother and daughter. It is at most an interesting vehicle for her feminist perspective. What is unique and delightful about THE GODDESS LETTERS is the humor derived from these earthbound immortals. One favorite passage, Demeter’s maternal jealousy of another’s off spring, is Victorian in its polite campiness: " I searched Oceanus’ caverns. I looked for his daughters, the girls of Oceanus and Thetys, Oceanus their father. Put a Titan with a Titan and what can one expect? They have three thousand daughters, a ripe supply in all the large sizes. ‘ Deep-bosomed,’ poets call them kindly.” THE GODDESS LETTERS is a swift read. A knowledge, indeed, a love for the classic myths is helpful. However, by no means is it necessary. -David Perry (Illiutrotioa from tb* cover) CONFESSIONS OF M ADAM E PSYCHE, by Dorothy Bryant (Ata Books, 376 pp. $11.95). Dorothy Bryant (author of THE KIN OF ATA ARE WAIT is inspirational, speaks through to us with her own straightforward ING FOR YOU) has put together a phenomenal piece of writing, words. Mischievous, compassionate, often confused, she moves THE CONFESSIONS OF M ADAME PSYCHE. Tbken from the through a world in up-roar. 77ie book addresses the racism preva actual diaries and correspondences of Mei-li Murrow, it tells the lent in those days against Chinese, Mexican and Black people. story of this Chinese-American woman who lived an extraordinary From her perspective we see how they were the groups to suffer the life. Born in San Francisco before the great earthquake, Mei-li most throughout the hard times. grows up a neglected genius. A manipulative sister channels her Mei-li’s own true spiritual awakening carries the book, albeit talents to develop a fraudulent psychic medium act which wins her slowly at times. Aside from the fullness of the plot and the smooth fame and some fortune. Mei-li travels to England and is there flow of events that only some fiction and exceptional autobiogra during the First World War. After eloping with an opera singer, she phies can achieve, the vivid descriptions of life in San Francisco and travels throughout post-war Europe. She returns to the U.S. alone, Europe in the early Twentieth Century makes this novel great quits the psychic business and forms a commune, has a lesbian reading. It seems misdirected to give credit to Bryant for this book relationship, lives through the great depression and helps to form when it was written by Mei-li herself. Yet whatever additions and unions. editing Bryant did, it serves to make Mei-li’s voice stronger, the Migrant worker, radio personality, lonely woman, Mei-li’s plot tighter. A terrific summer reading book. story is charged with wonder. Her incredible strength and beauty Laura Markowitz
