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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2016
At the time of his death in 1892, the paradigmatic American poet Walt Whitman was more widely celebrated in Britain than in his own country, having received the vocal support of the likes of Tennyson, William Michael Rossetti, John Addington Symonds, Swinburne (for a time) and Edward Carpenter. For these writers, Whitman’s political egalitarianism – expressed through notions of ‘manly love’ and comradeship – presented a powerful alternative to prevailing Victorian forms of political and social relations. Whitman also provided significant inspiration for British composers at the turn of the twentieth century, with settings by Holst, Delius, Grainger, Scott, Gurney, Bridge, Stanford, Wood, Vaughan Williams and others. Yet while Whitman’s transatlantic literary reception has come to be seen as a moment of crystallization in the formation of contemporary notions of homosexuality, his reception among British composers is viewed as having been highly circumscribed, focusing more on the democratic and mystical implications of Whitman’s poetry.
This article suggests a different account of Vaughan Williams’s reading of Whitman, and explores the implications of this reading for our broader understanding of the relationship between several notions of nationalism, masculinity and modernism. This examination aims to complicate, inter alia, the narrative of rupture associated with the transition to modernism, by demonstrating how the continuity of intellectual concerns across aesthetic, national, and sexual spheres has been obscured by strategies of displacement.
1 Neighbour, Oliver, ‘The Place of the Eighth among Vaughan Williams’s Symphonies’, in Alain Frogley, ed., Vaughan Williams Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 216 Google Scholar, fn. 10.
2 Indeed, Ray Monk has commented that ‘the effect of lines [from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass] upon Russell – who previously had nearly swooned when his teacher used the word “breast” – was electrifying and served to confirm him in his view of America as “a land of promise for lovers of freedom”. Whitman – or “Walt”, as Russell always called him, conferring upon him the intimacy of a close friend – became one of his idols. The first place he visited when he went to America three years later was the house in which Whitman had lived. It was a gesture of respect and gratitude for Whitman’s having brought out into the open and declared healthy and normal, desires that, by the spring of 1893, had become so strong in Russell that he considered them a threat to his sanity’ (Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872–1921, vol. 1 (New York: The Free Press, 1996): 53).
3 Williams, Ursula Vaughan, R.V.W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1964): 65 Google Scholar.
4 This list of reminders included ‘1.) six gun teams/ 800 rounds of amm./Officers kit, wagon/ Water cart to be up here at 6pm; 2.) Lewis guns with am’ (qtd. in Ursula Vaughan Williams, R.V.W., 128).
5 Kennedy, Michael, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1964; new edition 1980): 100 Google Scholar.
6 Adams, Byron, ‘“No Armpits, Please, We’re British”: Whitman and English Music, 1884–1936’, in Lawrence Kramer, ed., Walt Whitman and Modern Music (New York: Garland, 2000): 25–42 Google Scholar, here 26.
7 For a discussion of the institutionalization of narratives of rupture, or ‘heroic modernism’, in histories of modernism, and a presentation of alternative conceptions of modernism’s ‘badness’, see Mao, Douglas and Walkowitz, Rebecca L., Bad Modernisms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This collection is emblematic of ‘New Modernist Studies’ – an area which has sought to extend the geographical and temporal remit of modernism, as well as relativizing its ‘badness’ within a richer contextual history of competing agendas.
8 This phrase was used by Prettejohn, Elizabeth in ‘From Aestheticism to Modernism, and Back Again’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 19/2 (2006): 1–16 Google Scholar, here 2, referring to an observation about current scholarly practice made by Perkins, David in Is Literary History Possible? (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992): 32–33 Google Scholar.
9 For example, while Dahlhaus sought to construct a counter-narrative against a Stravinsky-centred conception of musical modernism, which he viewed as a ‘polemical barb at the Schoenberg school, consigning its expressionist phase to the nineteenth century’, Richard Taruskin posited that the true ‘break’ with the traditions of the nineteenth-century did not come until after World War I, with pre-war experimentation being merely an ‘intensification’ or ‘maximalization’ of its technical and expressive modes. See Dahlhaus, Carl, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989): 334 (original German, 1980)Google Scholar and Taruskin, Richard, ‘Music in the Early Twentieth Century’, Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 5 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. More recently, scholars such as J.P.E. Harper-Scott have argued that Taruskin’s narrative effectively erases modernism, as it focuses on the post-War neoclassical trends as the point of radical break, and is informed by a Cold-War view of musical modernism ( Harper-Scott, J.P.E., The Quilting Points of Musical Modernism: Revolution, Reaction, and William Walton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 See for example Hepokoski, James, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harper-Scott, J.P.E., Edward Elgar, Modernist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grimley, Daniel M., Carl Nielsen and the Idea of Modernism (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011)Google Scholar. For similar reorientations focused on the uses of certain terms in writings about music – such as ‘modern’ and ‘absolute’ – see McGuire, Charles Edward, ‘Edward Elgar: ‘“Modern” or “Modernist?” Construction of an Aesthetic Identity in the British Music Press, 1895–1934’, The Musical Quarterly 91/1–2 (2008): 8–38 Google Scholar and also Bonds, Mark Evan, Absolute Music: the History of an Idea (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 For a sketch of the voluminous literature in this area see Mahoney, Kristin, ‘The “Transition to Modernism”: Recent Research on the Victorian/Modern Divide’ Literature Compass 10/9 (2013): 716–724 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Mahoney points out that these reassessments do not imply that the terms ‘Victorian’ and ‘modernist’ are redundant, only that they must be invigorated in different ways to reflect to a greater extent the ‘cultural density’ of the turn of the century (p. 722). See also Gagnier, Regenia, ‘Victorian Self-Projection and Critique: Response’ Victorian Studies 53/3 (2011): 479–484 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mao and Walkowitz, Bad Modernisms.
12 Elizabeth Prettejohn, ‘From Aestheticism to Modernism’, 5–6. Prettejohn noted how the artistic techniques associated with Aestheticism have been devalued in explicitly gendered terms: ‘The apparent sacrifice of manly originality in favour of passive imitation of historical artistic styles; the frequent preference for smooth or reticent brushwork over the vigorous handling that characterizes much French avant-garde painting; or the fascination with decorative elaboration rather than bold simplification of design. … In the historiography of modern art, Victorian Aestheticism has consistently been configured as the feminized “other” of manly modernism, something that is clearly reflected in its lower status within twentieth-century art-historical canons’ (p. 6).
13 Kennedy, Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 379–80.
14 Kennedy, Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 381.
15 Neighbour, Oliver, ‘Ralph, Adeline, and Ursula Vaughan Williams: Some Facts and Speculation (with a Note about Tippett)’ Music & Letters 89/3 (2008): 337–345 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 341.
16 ‘Dear Gaga and Vuff … Adeline and I think you might like to see some designs for my trousseau. The first pattern represents my wedding suit, the general colour is puce the spots being of a sandy colour the boots to be light blue with red heels. Pattern 2 represents a good working suit for everyday wear being made of good strong material with plaid stockings. (Ralph Vaughan Williams, letter to Fredegond and Ermengard Maitland, Sept. 1897, qtd. in Williams, Vaughan, Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895–1958, ed. Hugh Cobbe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008): 17)Google Scholar.
17 Goehr, Lydia, Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. Strategies of displacement are further discussed below.
18 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985): 204 Google Scholar.
19 Sedgwick, Between Men, 205–6.
20 Sedgwick, Between Men, 206.
21 Dellamora, Richard, Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990): 87 Google Scholar.
22 Richard Cavell and Peter Dickinson have further extended Sedgwick’s notion of ‘homosociality’ beyond class, along geographical parameters, describing Whitman’s reception in England as ‘a classic instance of ‘trans-Atlantic homosociality’, and arguing that the histories of sexuality and nationalism are interconnected. See Cavell, Richard and Dickinson, Peter, ‘Bucke, Whitman, and the Cross-Border Homosocial’, American Review of Canadian Studies 26/3 (1996): 425–448 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 426.
23 Sedgwick, Between Men, 206–7.
24 Carpenter, Edward, The Intermediate Sex (London: S. Sonnenschein, 1909): 114 Google Scholar, qtd. in Cavell and Dickinson, ‘Bucke, Whitman, and the Cross-Border Homosocial’, 426–7.
25 Sedgwick, Between Men, 216–17.
26 Anonymous, , ‘The Advent of the Uncouth’ The Orchestra 18 (1872): 378–379 Google Scholar, here 378. The musical impact of Whitman’s ‘decadence’, according to this critic, manifest in opera composition as the rejection of melody and the democratic pre-eminence of chorus singers above soloists, both of which s/he associated with Wagner.
27 ‘Dr. R. Vaughan Williams’ The Musical Herald 781 (1913): 99–103, here 99.
28 Adams, Byron, ‘Foreword’ Music Quarterly, Special Issue on ‘British Modernism’ 91.1–2 (2008): 1–7 Google Scholar, here 4.
29 Adams, ‘“No Armpits, Please’, 39.
30 Collins, Sarah, ‘Practices of Aesthetic Self-Cultivation: British Composer-Critics of the “Doomed Generation”’ Journal of the Royal Musical Association 138/1 (2013): 85–128 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Indeed, his antithetical aesthetics was immediately apparent even from the outward appearance of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, which omitted Whitman’s name from the title page, instead just including a photograph of him dressed in workers’ clothing, set between a green cover jacket embossed with earthy leaves and vines.
32 Anonymous, ‘The Advent of the Uncouth’, 379.
33 Indeed, Alain Frogley, in his 1996 collection of essays on Vaughan Williams, recognizes immediately that ‘mention the name Ralph Vaughan and to most people’s mind come immediately three words English, pastoral, and folksong’ (‘Introduction’, in Frogley, ed., Vaughan Williams Studies, 1).
34 Blodgett, Harold, Walt Whitman in England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1934; reissued NY: Russell, 1973): 216–217 Google Scholar.
35 Frogley, Alain, ‘Constructing Englishness in Music: National Character and The Reception of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ in Frogley, ed., Vaughan Williams Studies, 1–22 Google Scholar, here 22.
36 Adams, Byron, ‘Scripture, Church, and Culture: Biblical Texts in the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ in Frogley ed., Vaughan Williams Studies, 99–117 Google Scholar, here 105.
37 Esty, Jed, A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 35 Google Scholar. (original emphasis)
38 Esty, A Shrinking Island, 35.
39 Blodgett, Walt Whitman in England, Preface.
40 Blodgett, Walt Whitman in England, 7.
41 Blodgett, Walt Whitman in England, 7.
42 Blodgett, Walt Whitman in England, 9.
43 Blodgett, Walt Whitman in England, Preface.
44 Sedgwick, Between Men, 202. This idea is also echoed by Cavell and Dickenson, where they refer to Whitman as an ‘equally great artifact’, as much as a poet (‘Bucke, Whitman, and the Cross-Border Homosocial’, 427).
45 Qtd.in Sedgwick, Between Men, 210.
46 Sedgwick, Between Men, 210.
47 Dellamora, Masculine Desire, 87.
48 Qtd. in Dellamora, Masculine Desire, 90.
49 Qtd. in Dellamora, Masculine Desire, 90.
50 Dellamora, Masculine Desire, 91.
51 The essay first appeared in The Contemporary Review 18 (August–November, 1871).
52 Dellamora, Masculine Desire, 91.
53 Sedgwick, Between Men, 217.
54 Newfield, Christopher, ‘Democracy and Male Homoeroticism’ The Yale Journal of Criticism 6/2 (1993): 29–62 Google Scholar, here 30.
55 Newfield, , ‘Democracy and Male Homoeroticism’, 43, quoting from Derrida ‘The Politics of Friendship’, The Journal of Philosophy 85 (November 1988): 640 Google Scholar.
56 According to Adams, this highpoint dated from 1884 to 1936 (Adams, ‘“No Armpits, Please’” 25).
57 Kramer, Lawrence, Walt Whitman and Modern Music (New York: Garland, 2000): xviiGoogle Scholar.
58 Kimmel, William, ‘Vaughan Williams’s Choice of Words’ Music & Letters 19/2 (1938): 132–142 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 140.
59 Kimmel, ‘Vaughan Williams’s Choice of Words’, 140–41.
60 See for example Williams, Vaughan, letter to Edward J. Dent, 1 July 1927, GB-Ckc, King’s/PP/EJD/4/456/3Google Scholar.
61 Kimmel, ‘Vaughan Williams’s Choice of Words’, 135.
62 Williams, Ursula Vaughan, ‘Ralph Vaughan Williams and his Choice of Words for Music’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 99 (1972–73): 81–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 82.
63 Kennedy, Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 83.
64 Banfield, Stephen, Sensibility and English Song: Critical Studies of the Early 20th Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 27 Google Scholar.
65 For example Adams wrote that ‘during the crises of faith that beset the Victorian and Edwardian thinkers, composers searched for alternatives to biblical texts that yet would express both the spiritual restlessness and “evolutionary” optimism of their times … free from the taint of a Christianity that seemed outmoded and intellectually compromised. In Whitman they found a poet at once democratic, mystical, and evolutionary’ (Adams, ‘“No Armpits, Please”’ 29).
66 During a visit to London in December 1898, Delius wrote to German painter Jelka Rosen, who would later become his wife: ‘I cannot work here at all, quite impossible … What a useless rotten life I lead here! What a City! What people! No wonder Nietzsche went mad. As soon as I am certain of no success here I shall hurry back! So you may see me sooner than you expected … I have my Walt Whitman and Nietzsche here so that I am not quite alone’ (Frederick Delius, letter to Jelka Rosen, 18 Dec. 1898, AUS-PVgm, 02.0107).
67 Guilbeaux, Henri, Walt Whitman, Portraits de’Hier, Deuxième Année, 37 (Paris: H. Fabre, 1910)Google Scholar, cited in Frogley, Alain, ‘“O Farther Sail”: Vaughan Williams and Whitman’ in Let Beauty Awake: Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Literature (London: Elgar Editions, 2010): 77–95 Google Scholar, here 79.
68 Frogley, ‘“O Farther Sail”’, 79.
69 Banfield, Sensibility and English Song, 27.
70 Banfield, Sensibility and English Song, 27.
71 Banfield, Sensibility and English Song, 102.
72 Banfield, Sensibility and English Song, 105.
73 Banfield, Sensibility and English Song, 104.
74 Mellers, Wilfrid, Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion (London: Pimlico, 1989): 17 Google Scholar.
75 Town, Stephen, ‘“Full of Fresh Thoughts”: Vaughan Williams, Whitman and the Genesis of A Sea Symphony ’, in Vaughan Williams Essays, ed. Byron Adams and Robin Wells (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003): 73–101 Google Scholar, here 74.
76 Frogley, ‘“O Farther Sail”’, 80–81.
77 Qtd, in Goehr, Elective Affinities, 205.
78 See for example her chapter ‘The Musicality of Violence’ in Elective Affinities.
79 ‘Like Falling Leaves: The Erotics of Mourning in Four Drum-Taps Settings’, in Walt Whitman and Modern Music, ed. Lawrence Kramer (New York: Garland, 2000): 151–165, here 158.
80 Goehr (referring to Adorno), Elective Affinities, 201.
81 Goehr, Elective Affinities, 238.
82 Erkkila, Betsy, Whitman the Political Poet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989): 92 Google Scholar.
83 Erkkila, Whitman the Political Poet, 94.
84 Quoted in Fussell, Paul, Jr. ‘Whitman’s Curious Warble: Reminiscence and Reconciliation’, in The Presence of Walt Whitman: Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. R.W.B. Lewis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962): 28–51 Google Scholar, where it is said to be from ‘How I Still Get Around at Sixty and Take Notes’ (1881). But elsewhere this is quoted as being from ‘Sea-Shore Fancies’ in Specimen Days (1882).
85 Whitman, Walt, ‘As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life’, from ‘Sea-Drift’, in Leaves of Grass (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1881–82): 202 Google Scholar.
86 Whitman, ‘As I Ebb’d’, 203.
87 Whitman, Walt, ‘Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking’ from ‘Sea-Drift’ in Leaves of Grass (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1881–82): 200 Google Scholar.
88 Whitman, ‘As I Ebb’d’, 202.
89 Reprinted in Williams, Vaughan, National Music and Other Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1963): 154–159 Google Scholar, here 154.
90 Vaughan Williams, ‘Nationalism and Internationalism’, 155.
91 Williams, Vaughan, ‘Nationalism and Internationalism’, 155 Google Scholar.
92 Williams, Vaughan, ‘The Evolution of Folk-Song’, in National Music and Other Essays, 28–52 Google Scholar, here 38.
93 Williams, Vaughan, ‘Gustav Holst’, Music and Letters 1/4 (1920): 305–317 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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