(Reprinted from here: https://www.gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/amarriagebelowzero-operalibretto/5)

Part 1:

Refuting the Voice of the Majority –

A Marriage Below Zero and its Contemporary Readers[1]

Part One – Opening Volley

The Barrage of Questions

In terms of preparing a libretto based on A Marriage Below Zero, I know that I have left myself open to an onslaught of potential criticism. The ‘Whys’ mount up. Why have I split Elsie into two characters[2]; why have I made the mother and friend characters so ‘in-the-know’; and mostly, why have I not killed off Arthur in a Paris Hotel room? The answer is, I have done nothing that is not in Cohen’s book, either overtly – and accessible to even a first-time reader – or found there if carefully read and considered in the long context of characters and the narrative as a whole. These latter items are not generally apparent to the casual reader, so patience is called for as I elaborate on them.

That being said, we must first ask what this book meant to the contemporary audience upon which it was released. There are two readings – the outsider view and the insider. The outsider was invited to impose his or her own point-of-view on the work, moralistic or otherwise, while the insider was inexplicably drawn into sympathy and understanding for the characters. The insider was invited to comfortably read between the lines, and be at home there.

Part Two – The Argument

It’s a Queen’s World

It seems to me men’s relationships have been so fragile in the modern world because – Well, one, they are men; strong-willed and advantageous of new situations, and two, mostly because the modern world has only made hostile threats against men who are together. The struggle of these couples has always been the same one – to carve out of the prickly world a place for themselves to live. The world has yet to provide a space for partners where they can be open and unworried about critical and legal persecution, and shrug off the lamentable pressure to marry women as ‘cures’.[3] The little legal advancement in the Untied States since the 1950’s has been due to tooth-and-nail sacrifice by a dedicated and small band of men and women. If you think I ought to be writing of such matters in the past tense, I would only remind you that in the U.S., consensual contact between grownups was only fully decriminalized in the summer of 2004! In addition, remember the shameful interference by the Bush Administration in denying surviving same-sex partners any benefits from the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. Demure all you like that these things are relegated to the past, but as of the writing of this essay, the ending of service members being drummed out of honorable military careers for an inherent attribute is only a matter of being a few weeks old.

This space for partners is what is most longed for in 19^th and early 20^th century Gay writings: Joseph dreams of a Mediterranean land where he and his partner can live free (1870)[4], Tim of a place apart within the school system to achieve the same (1891)[5], Imre of a place to recuperate where they can be left alone (1906)[6], and ultimately, and most defiantly of all, the happy getaway and ever-after for Maurice and his brave hero, Scudder (1913)[7].

Cohen’s book was written for his contemporary queens who could tap effortless into this desire for partners to have and maintain their own space. The clues are abundant, and for men in the life at the time, obvious. But, since this information passes through the eyes of an uninitiated Elsie, the reader is presented with unacknowledged and uncommented upon observations. The Gays of his day would have seen these markers as coming clearly from a writer who was an insider, but yet pass harmlessly through those outside the realms of the initiated.

Analysis of the book by late 20^th century minds failed to key into the importance of a book showing a happy same-sex couple and their struggles to stay together despite their mistakes and the mistakes of Elsie, and who failed to register any of the many Gay clues[8]. They also, even if reviewed from a Queer-perspective, take Elsie’s word at face value, as if they too were uninitiated. Due to a misread of Arthur’s motivations, these reviewers have tended to relegate the book to one unfortunate word: ‘melodramatic.’[9] I have a feeling this was a ‘modernist’s’ way of reducing any work of writing that did not fit into a sparse post-Hemmingway-style as unworthy of reading. I would contend that most people who continue to recycle this comment in regards to A Marriage Below Zero do not have a proper sense of what the term means, and in fact, they may simply use it as synonymous with ‘dramatic.’[10] To refute any conflation, let’s look at an example from a work much better known than Cohen’s novel. In Richard III, Shakespeare has the title character seduce the widow of the man he has just murdered to clear his path to kingship. And, did I mention, she is on her way to her dead husband’s funeral? Now by rights, a more impossible scene to make realistic can hardly be imagined, and many an artist would avoid staging this confrontation at all costs. It is likely to fail. It is likely to come across as a near-miss, or more properly, as underdeveloped and melodramatic. But Shakespeare, a ballsy writer for the ages, not only tackles this scene, but in a relatively brief manner, makes it hair-raisingly real. He does so by quickly plumbing the psychological depths of an implicit threat from the man who would be king at all costs, and the calmly embraced vendetta of a widow best positioning herself for vengeance. The scene, ‘impossible’ as it is, triumphs and adds immensely to the spectator’s understanding of the rest of the play. When a serious and well-informed critic levels ‘melodramatic’ against Cohen, he is likely to be thinking of just two such ‘impossible’ scenes. The garden scene is where Elsie confronts Arthur and his partner in the middle of the night. Here it is central that the reader sees Elsie as breaking her promise of a platonic and loveless marriage, and Arthur’s sinking dread that Elsie loves him.[11] And secondly, the scene where Elsie steals into the rental house Arthur has set up for himself and Dill. She breaks in upon them, but is only expecting to find a woman, and is thus blinded to the truth of what she has glimpsed. Psychologically this scene quickly becomes taut as Elsie blindly threatens the couple with blackmail and ruin. We feel for her, for she has no idea what she is doing, but we empathize with the men, for through Elsie, the world itself comes to threaten them in their own parlor. This danger only drives the men closer together.

Cohen, like Shakespeare, was brave to even attempt such literary tightrope walking. These scenes amazed me when I first encountered them, and like the Bard, our author is able to pull off the ‘impossible’ and add tremendous depth to his characters. Cohen was ballsy, and it pays off with Elsie growing more and more real to the reader with each passing word.

But what is the evidence that Gay men of the time would have found a recognizable figure in A Marriage Below Zero, and in its author?

Part Three – Cohen

A Book by its Cover?

Alfred J. Cohen (1861-1928) has yet to have a proper biography written about him.[12] Born in Birmingham, he attended an exclusive boarding school, then Oxford, and finally studied performing arts for three years in Paris. What drew him to New York from Paris in 1887 is obscure. But he soon began a brilliant career as a theatre critic for several newspapers, and continued his well-respected literary campaign. His first novel was printed in London in 1885, and Jonathan’s Home received very favorable reviews. Settled in a career as a critic, he was at the forefront of acerbic criticism as entertainment – or what was then coined the “flippant school” of review. In many ways, that is his lasting legacy. Since he began its camp tone in the 1890’s, it has not waned on the critical scene.[13]

It is important to point out that Cohen was Jewish. The level of adherence, or non-adherence, to this faith is unknown. But what seems important is, that as a person with a Jewish name, his career options were limited. He created a few noms de plume, ‘Alan Dale’ appearing at the head of his review columns, and later on much of his fiction.[14] Another aspect is, that as a Jew, he may have had direct contact with the longstanding rabbinical understanding on the quality of the love that existed between David and Jonathan. More on this later, but Jewish scholars through the ages were very interested in the portrayal and the meaning of this loving partnership.

Now, just as the old saw has it that one should not attempt to judge a book by its cover, we should not be led to any conclusions about Cohen’s Gayness (or lack thereof…?) based on the titles of his books. However, owning to the dearth of much other available research, his titles appeal (or fail to appeal) to us as much as they would have to his contemporaries: An Eerie He and She (1889), An Old Maid Kindled (1890), Miss Innocence (1891), Conscience on Ice (1892), My Footlight Husband (1893), A Moral Busybody (1894), His Own Image (1899), A Girl Who Wrote (1902) and Familiar Chats with Queens of the Stage (1890) – to name but a few! Plainly, Cohen was not stogy, and clearly a survey like this seems to reaffirm a proper place for him as a staunch critic of Victorian times rather than an apologist for them. Again, lacking any research, it would be well worthy of study to link Cohen’s influence on the generation of American writers following him, and who spent serious artistic capital to poke fun of that era – like Ring Lardner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Mae West.[15]

Was he Gay? His works are the best evidence of that, otherwise research must come up with more information than I can now access. I find no reference to a wife, but that, in his age, would not mean much either way.

We must examine the insider information within the pages of A Marriage Below Zero for stuff that only we would know.

Part Four – Insider’s View

Camp is as Camp Does

Cohen’s publisher, Dillingham, brought out A Marriage Below Zero as a fifty-cent paperback. It generated considerable published reviews. The Cincinnati Enquirer found it “very bright and pleasing…the writer has a delightful way of telling his story,” while the New York Graphic warned its readership that the book was “extremely moral.”[16] Once the outsiders’ views were waded through, a Gay contemporary reader would have two areas that told him he was on ‘knowing’ ground: abundant camp humor, and practical, if esoteric, information on being in the life. Such information would only come from another living such a life.

Camp, as a form of tongue-in-cheek humor, goes back at least to the origin of the word in the 16^th century.[17] Anything portrayed in a slightly skewed manner can count as camp, especially if in a Gay context. For our purposes, camp means items in the book that outsiders would find amusing, but that contemporary Gay readers would have found poignant as well as funny in a slice-of-life way. Let’s enumerate some of the camp features.

- Cohen provides the first and longest camp joke in the form of everyone knowing that Arthur is Gay except Elsie. Letty conceives of introducing Arthur so that Elsie can better appreciate the tongue-tied and red-faced beaux who show a genuine interest in her as a woman.[18] She is upset and amazed when after a time Elsie becomes attached to Arthur. Letty proceeds to botch telling Elsie that Arthur and Dill are together. First she warns Elsie that the men in high society find them unpopular, and hints that her male cousin has nastier things to say about Arthur.[19] Mamma gets in on the act, and in an extremely leading way, tells Elsie: “He is cold and undemonstrative [to you], and yet I can tell that he likes you. He seems to have something on his mind.” She is expecting to read a sign that Elsie knows about Arthur, but is left ambiguously wondering by Elsie’s acerbic retort: “Well, that is better than not possessing a mind to have anything on[.]”[20] Eventually Letty and Mamma trust that Elsie knows what she is doing in marrying Arthur, but after weeks of a frustrated married life in Kew, Mamma is shocked to have Elsie confess ignorance in her husband’s “problem.” What results in Chapter 13 is a fantastic scene where Mamma leads Elsie to draw her own logical conclusions. After musing that she expected Elsie and Arthur to settle down into a boring “commonplace, everyday couple,” she first gives an example of the “lowest, most degrading passion,” “[being] a slave to alcohol, my dear. Nothing is worse than that.” She forces a befuddled Elsie to acknowledge that Arthur has no drinking problem. After this careful setup, she leads Elsie down the garden path: “The case is absolutely transparent. Husband indifferent, always from home, uninterested in wife – why, my dear it’s all as plain as a pikestaff.” Ultimately, poor Mamma is unable to tell Elsie her husband is Gay, but advises a detective to follow him knowing he will report only meetings with Dill. She fibs to keep Elsie from hysterics and mentions the possibility of another woman. Also camp is Elsie’s inability to picture Arthur interested in “this other woman.”

- Another character in-the-know, who cannot bring himself to speak plainly to Elsie, is the doctor called in to treat Arthur’s breakdown.[21] He has suffered what can only be understood in modern terms as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, resulting from Elsie breaking into Arthur and Dill’s rented home. She unknowingly threatens blackmail and aims the worst of her hostilities to Dill, which traumatizes Arthur deeply.[22] The doctor tells Elsie that: “Arthur must have been subjected to some long-continued mental anxiety[.]” Hint, hint; getting no acknowledgment from her, he continues: “My dear young lady, this is not an unusual case – […] Young men[,] like your husband[,] cannot break suddenly from old associations, from bachelor friends, from – ah! How do I know?” He avoids saying what should be obvious, but prescribes treatment as follows: “forgive everything, and make no allusions whatever to the past[.]”[23]

- Another camp feature in a lighter vein comes with Elsie, and everyone else, finding Arthur to be “prettier” than she is. At first sight she gushed to herself: “His features were so regular, and his complexion so perfect, that if you had shaven off the small golden mustache which adorned his upper lip, and dressed him in my garments, I felt that he would have done them much more credit than I could ever hope to do. He was extremely pretty.”[24] After coming to know him over several weeks, she found herself dancing with a highly agitated Arthur but could only muse lyrically: “Arthur in evening dress was extremely comely” and “I wondered if the curl in his mustache were natural, or, if not, how he managed to bring it to such perfection.”[25] Ironic, as this objectification of appearance is what Elsie found so offensive when young men did it to her. On her wedding day, she completely looked past the continued physical decline of Arthur caused by his stressed emotional state, and only saw: “that I was not nearly as pretty as Arthur. The flush on his cheek, his full red lips, long eyelashes, and splendid complexion far surpassed my efforts in those directions. He was more noticed in the church than I was – […] Perhaps it was his beauty after all that gained for him the contempt of men [–] all the petty envy and spite in this world.”[26]

- Also camp is Arthur’s relishing: “the amount of publicity which […] would attend the [wedding.] [H]e positively gloried in it. He seemed anxious to have his marriage recorded in the four corners of the globe.”[27] And the fact that this publicity changed opinions about Arthur amongst society men. “[T]he men who had previously […] looked down upon Arthur Ravener, now appeared anxious to get to know him, and apologetically anxious, too[.] They had evidently more respect for Elsie Bouverie’s affianced husband, than for Captain Dillington’s bosom friend.”[28] This change was later confirmed as she eavesdropped on young society wags gossiping about Arthur and another young man whom they suspect belongs in the same camp:

- First of all is Dill as an officer. Men in brass and braid were powerful erotic totems to the upper-class British Gay man of the time. Youth in beautiful uniforms were not only virile symbols of manliness, but of lower-class young men more than likely available for sex. “A bit of scarlet” was Gay slang for sex with a soldier, especially with one from the colorfully attired London-based Guard Regiments. In 1910, it was noted that: “Soldiers have taken advantage of [their] appeal for at least the past two hundred years, and have […] supplemented their pay” And that “officers have been instrumental in introducing men from the ranks to prospective clients on a commission basis.[32] […] From the clients’ point of view, the advantages of having a soldier lover were many. […] [H]e is likely to be: cleaner, less disease-prone. Less likely to be brutal, or a blackmailer as he has as much to lose by a ‘row’ as his patron. So as a rule he is discretion itself. […] [O]ne only had to stroll round […] to find [soldiers] in almost open self-marketing…on any evening, the street corners, or the promenades of the Music Halls and cheap theaters of London […] show one the fine flower of the British Soldier[,] dressed in his best uniform, clean shaven, well-groomed and handsome[.]” Apart from cruising, more discrete patrons, with perhaps more to lose, could be introduced to private establishments to meet and spend intimate time with uniformed young men. “There was at least one known procuress operating from a confectioners shop near the barracks in Regent’s Park[.]”[33] Against all odds, we actually have a firsthand account of a sexual and emotional awakening taking place at this establishment. John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), a British classicist and early Gay Rights advocate, included his 1877 adventure at this establishment in his Memoirs. He went with a friend, and “moved by something stronger than curiosity, I made an assignation with a brawny young soldier for an afternoon to be passed in a private room at the same house.” On the appointed day, the “assignation” completed, Symonds had a revelation about himself, his lover, and the potentially peaceful and enriching nature of same-sex love.[34] “[F]or the first time in my experience I shared a bed with one so different from myself, so ardently desired by me. [He] was a very nice fellow, as it turned out: comradely and natural, regarding the affair […] from […] a reasonable point of view. For him at all events it involved nothing unusual, nothing shameful; and his simple attitude, the not displeasing vanity with which he viewed his own physical attractions, and the general sympathy with which he met the passion they aroused, taught me something I had never before conceived[.] Instead of yielding to any ‘brutal impulse,’ I thoroughly enjoyed the close proximity of [his] splendid […] manhood.” [35] By the end of the afternoon, the men getting dressed, Symonds “sat and smoked and talked with him, and felt […] that some at least of the deepest […] problems might be solved by [brotherhood.][36] […] [A]sking and yielding, concession and abstention all find their natural sphere [among sensual men]: perhaps more than in the sexual relations consecrated by middle-class matrimony.”[37] Cohen failed to mention which regiment Dill was attached to, largely because Elsie did not care, but since The Royal Horse Guards attracted, and continues to attract, much erotic attention, I have assigned him here. See appendix 3 for what men of this unit look like.

- Another particularly English trait exists in the book as an innuendo of ‘fagging.’[38] Due to the nature of ‘Public Schools’ (the oxymoronically named private and exclusive boarding school system of the elite), boys as young as eight are expected to act as servants to the older boys, and where endemic abuse of a sexual and emotional kind has existed for centuries. It was in this system of brutality, Arthur tells Elsie, that Dill first protected him, and relays how they first began to develop an intimate fellowship. Arthur does not say how old he was when he entered the school Dill was already present at, but because of the ‘fagging’ system, they could not have been more than three years apart, as any more than that and the system would not let them associate at all. In other words, at more than a three-year age difference, Arthur could still have been Dill’s ‘fag,’ but strong societal proscription would have kept them from forming a friendship. Schoolboy romance was also a broad area for British Gay fiction of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Boys in love were not yet seen as threatening to society at large for a legal reason: because boys were not empowered by the law, they were not subject to charges of coercion, or of corrupting others. “A boy may love boys in such a place without, once he leaves it, ever being tarnished by actually having to be [Gay]. Boarding-school is the citadel of the passing phase.”[39] The cruelty of forcing two boys apart by an another boy who is apparently jealous, and certainly sadistic, is at the heart of Julian Mitchell’s play Another Country, 1981:

“Not when things have got so bad a man has been caught with a man in another house and then hanged himself!”

“You know perfectly well how we spent our first two years here, Fowler. How much beating and bullying there was.”

“At least it stopped us indulging in immorality!” […]

“Please – If I’m responsible, then I’m responsible. But I made a vow at the end of my first term, if I ever became head of house, I’d do my utmost to see that no-one ever had to creep about in fear and terror the way we did.”[40]

The scene changes to a young man (who would be head-of-house) talking to his younger servant, who is also a student.

WHARTON, the dorm fag, is thirteen, his voice unbroken. […]

“Sorry, Judd.”

“What for?”

“I – I don’t know. Sorry.”

“Stop saying it! […]

“Yes, Judd.”

“So don’t connive at your own oppression. Don’t assume that just because you’re a fag you must be in the wrong. Resist the tradition!

“Thank you, Judd.”[41]

Careful reading of Cohen's work leads one to understand it as a concise and meticulous work where nothing is added that does not lend itself to the story.[42] In that light, the following brief incident seems to speak of a schoolboy relationship of either an abusive or romantic kind. Letty is speculating with Elsie about what boys do, talk about, etc. when alone. She spied in on her brother when he and some friends were ‘down’ from school and tells Elsie: “When my brother Ralph was at home […] we always used to have the house full of young fellows. I used to come upon them when they were laughing hardily[.] Once or twice I asked them to tell me what was amusing them. The youngest of the party blushed, while the oldest adroitly changed the subject.”[43] It should be noted that Cohen himself was a product of such a ‘Public School’ education, and very likely experienced this 'fagging' tradition firsthand.

- According to Cohen, Gay cruising is centered in and around a grand

hotel’s portico on Fifth Avenue in New York. He says the unnamed

hotel is on Fifth Avenue, and near Madison Square.[44] If you had given

this seemingly vague description to any New York cab driver at the

time, he would have taken you directly to The Fifth Avenue Hotel, one

of the largest and grandest hotels of its day. Exterior photographs of

this hotel are shown in Appendix 5, and clear as day the portico in

question can be seen. A further illustration of the “Reading Room”

from 1871 shows a coterie of men, and only men, far more interested

in each other than in their reading materials (or shall we think of them

as props?). Again, outsiders would skim over a bland description of

men milling about a hotel as inconsequential, while Gay men would

either chuckle in recognition, or call for a cab.

- Speaking of cabs, another insider clue relates to when Elsie takes one

from Gare du Nord in Paris. The address she gives the hack evidently

startles him and makes him suspicious. After he claimed to not know

the place, the well-informed Elsie tells us: “I told the man that the

[Hotel] Vaupin was in the Rue Geoffroy-Marie, then it was his turn to

stare. I urged him to hurry, and he did so, seemingly under protest.”[45]

Why, "under protest"? This address is only steps away from Folies

Bergère and down the avenue from Moulin Rouge and Montmartre.

Clearly, Cohen has dropped us in the middle of 19^th century Paris’ Gay

neighborhood; its bohemian heart where Toulouse-Lautrec lived and

worked, as did many of the city's sex-workers of both genders.

Perhaps the real 'Hotel Vaupin' was as well-known in Paris as the Fifth

Avenue Hotel was in New York.

- Gay insiders would also have recognized an illustration of another way

men could meet, or communicate. One of the largest obstacles to

Gays not feeling utterly isolated and unique, was the relative

inopportunity to meet other Gay people. Sure, they meet any number,

but secrecy and abundant caution from persecution and blackmail kept

Gay men from asking each other if they were or not. One covert and

extremely popular way to meet was through printed listings in

magazines and newspapers. Carefully worded and coded messages

passed by outsiders’ scrutiny without suspicion, but meant something

to the men in-the-know. Eventually, homophobia spread to the point

that ‘medical men’ actively began to seek out such listings to publicize

this ‘illicit behavior.’ “Two such ads appeared in the New York Herald

in April 1905, although the doctor who discovered them considered

them unusual. A quarter century later, Broadway Brevities claimed that

romance magazines with correspondent departments ran messages in

every issue designed to put [Gays] in touch with one another.” By

reading such listings, men “used gay subcultural codes to […] place

themselves […] in the dominant culture, […] and to turn ‘straight’

spaces into gay spaces.”[46] Cohen shows us that Elsie, killing time,

while she waits for Dill to leave her and Arthur alone: “took up the

Times and tried to get interested in the ‘agony’ column. I wondered

what it was that A.B. would hear to his advantage if he

communicated with Mr. Snipper of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”[47] What

indeed?

- One aspect that romantically inclined Victorian men would have

responded to was the reference to Damon and Pythias. Cohen has

Letty introduce Arthur and Dill to Elsie’s attention via a coded slur, one

that escapes Elsie’s scrutiny. “[They] are known in society as Damon

and Pythias.” She then follows up with a laundry list of leading

innuendo, which again Elsie ignores. “They are inseparable. Such a

case of friendship I have never seen. […] They always enter a ball-

room together and leave together. Oh course they can’t dance with

each other, but I’m sure they regret the fact. They are together

between the dances, conversing with as much zest as though they had

not met for a month. Girls don’t like them[.] Men seem to despise

them. You might appreciate them, however[.]” To which Elsie retorts:

“I’m sure I should.”[48] This intended slur on the men is reclaimed by

Arthur in the best of Queer fashion. Soon after they meet, Elsie sees

Arthur glance longingly at Dill. She waxes poetically that there is

nothing as beautiful as the love between two sincere friends. Arthur

stiffens, and tells Elsie “You have heard of Damon and Pythias, […] I

don’t mind, […] make all the fun of us you like.”[49] Cohen’s

introduction of this heavily romanticized and heroic same-sex couple

brings an air of nobility to Arthur’s and Dill love that contemporary

queens would have relished. But let’s look at how and why late 19^th

century Gay men idolized this ancient couple as a modern paragon.

(See Part 2 for the conclusion)