Shattering an Egg is unworthy of you, no Pass time for men. Think what you would have in your hand if you putforth your Giant strength and crushed the solid stone. Something slippery and cold and unthinkably disagreeable.
Maud felt reluctant to open Leonora's letter, which had an imperious and accusing air. So she opened instead the brown one and saw it was worse, it was from Fergus Wolff, with whom she had had no communication for over a year. Certain handwriting can turn the stomach, after one, after five, after twenty-five years. Fergus's was, like much male writing, cramped, but with characteristic little flourishes. Maud's stomach turned, the vision of the tormented bed rose again in her mind's eye. She put a hand to her hair.
Dear Maud, never forgotten, as I hope I'm not either, quite. How are things in damp old Lincolnshire? Do the fens make you melancholy? How is Christabel? Would you be pleased to hear I have decided to give a paper on Christabel at the York conference on metaphor? I thought I'd lecture on The Queen of the Castle: What is kept in the Keep? How doesthat strike you? Do I have your imprimatur? Might I even hope to be able to consult your archive?
I should deal with contrasting and conflicting metaphors for the fairy Melusine's castle-building activities. There's a verygood piece byJacques Le Goffon "MelusineDéfricheuse";according to the new historians she's a kind of earth spirit or local goddess of foison or minor Ceres. But then you could adopt a Lacanian modelof the image of the keep - Lacan says, f(theformation of the ego is symbolised in dreams by a fortress or stadium [any stadiums in Christabel?]- surrounded by marshes and rubbish-tips - dividing it into two opposite fields of contest where the subject flounders in quest of the lofty, remote inner castle whose form symbolises the id in a quite startling way." I could complicatethis with a few more real and imaginary castles - and a loving and respectfulreference to your own seminal work on the limen and the liminal. What do you think? Will it wash? Will I be torn by Maenads?
I was inspired to write partly by the excitement of this project, partly because my spies tell me that you and Roland Michell (a dull but honourable contemporary of mine) have beendiscovering something or othertogether. My chief spy - a young woman who is not best pleased by the turn of events - tells me you are spending the New Yeartogether, investigating connections. I am naturally consumed by curiosity. Perhaps I will come and consult your archive. I do wonder whatyou make of young Michell. Don't eat him, dear Maud. He isn't in your class. Academically, that is, he isn't, as you may hâve discovered by now.
Whereas you and I could have had the most delectable talk about towers above and under water, serpent tails and flying fish. Did you read Lacan on flying fish and vesicle persecution? I miss you from time to time, you know. You weren 't wholly nice orfair to me. Nor I to you, you will say - but when are we ever? You are so severe with male shortcomings. Please give me the go-ahead on my siege-paper.
Much love as always
Fergus
Dear Maud,
I find it odd thatI haven't heard from you for maybe two months now -I trust all is well with you, and that your silence indicates only that your work is going well and absorbing all your attention. I worry about you when you are silent -I know you haven*t been happy -I think of you with great love as you progress -
When I last wrote I mentioned I might write something on water and milk and amniotic flud in Melusina- why is water always seen as the female?- we've discussedthis -I want to write a big piece on the undines and nixies and melusinas - women perceived as dangerous - what do you think? I could extend it to the Drowned City- With specialreferenceto non-genital imageryfor female sexuality - we needto get awayfrom the cunt as well asfrom the phallus - the drowned women in the city mightrepresent the totality of the female body as an erogenous zone if the circumambient fluid were seen as an undifferentiated eroticism, and this might be possible to connect to the erotic totality of the woman/dragon stirring the waters of the large marble bath, or submerging her person in it as LaM. tellingly describes her. What do you think, Maud?
Would you be prepared to give a paper at the Australian meeting of the Sapphic society in iç88? I had in mind that we would devote that session entirely to the studyof the female erotic in nineteenth-century poetry and the strategies and subterfuges through which it had to present or dis-cover itself. You might have extended your thinking about liminality and the dissolution of boundaries. Or you might wish to be more rigorous in your exploration of LaMotte's lesbian sexuality as the empoweringforce behind her work. (I acceptthat her inhibitions made her characteristically devious and secretive - but you do not give her sufficient credit for the strength with which she does nevertheless obliquely speak out.)
I think so often of the brief time we had together in the summer. I think of our long tramps on the Wolds and late hours in the library, andscoops of real American ice-cream by your fireside. You are so thoughtful and gentle - you made mefeel I am crashing around in yourfragile surroundings, clumsily knocking down little screens and room dividers you have set up around your English privacy - but you aren 't happy, are you, Maud? There is an emptiness in your life.
It would do you good to come out here and experience the hectic storm and stress of American Women's Studies. I could find you a post as soon as you wanted it, no problem. Think about it.
In the interim, go and leave my love at Her grave - use the shears if you've time, or inclination - it made my blood boil to see how she was neglected. Put some more flowers down in my name - -for the grass to drink - I found her resting-place unbearably moving. I wish I thought she could have foreseen she was to be loved as she should be loved -
And I send you all my love - and wait for an answer this time
Your
Leonora
This letter posed and shelved a moral problem: when and how much was it wise or honourable to tell Leonora about the discovery? She would not particularly like it. She did not like R. H. Ash. Still less would she like being put in the position of not having known about it, if she continued to write confident papers on Christabel's sexuality. She would feel betrayed and sisterhood would be betrayed.
As for Fergus. As for Fergus. He had a habit which Maud was not experienced enough to recognise as a common one in ex-lovers of giving little tugs at the carefully severed spider-threads or puppet-strings which had once tied her to him. She was annoyed at his proposal for a siege-paper, without knowing how much it was manufactured ad hoc to annoy her. She was also annoyed by his arcane reference to Lacan and flying fish and vesicle persecution. She decided to track this down-method was her defence against anxiety-and duly found it.
I remember the dream of one of my patients, whose aggressive drives took the form of obsessive phantasies; in the dream he saw himself driving a car, accompanied by a woman with whom he was having a rather difficult affair, pursued by a flying fish, whose skin was so transparent that one could see the horizontal liquid level through the body, an image of vesicle persecution of great anatomical clarity…
The tormented bed rose again in her mind's eye, like old whipped eggs, like dirty snow. Fergus Wolff appeared to be slightly jealous of Roland Michell.