A Marriage Below Zero - opera libretto - 5. Appendix 1 - Essay

Appendix 1: Essay

 

Refuting the Voice of the Majority –

A Marriage Below Zero and its Contemporary Readers[1]

 

An honest tale speeds best,

Being plainly told.

Shakespeare

Richard III,

Act I, Scene iv

 

 

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:

“Now you brand young Honeyworth with the mark of Cain[.] You have no evidence[.]” […]

“Eyes are evidence in this case.” […]

“You see how mistaken you were in the case of Arthur Ravener. You had branded him – everybody had, in fact. [N]ow there is not a fellow in the crowd […] who would not be glad to apologize for his brutality.” […]

“I would not apologize to Arthur Ravener. […] Before I apologize to Ravener, I’d like to know Mrs. Ravener’s side of the story.”[29]

- We are to note that Arthur did all the interior design for their house in Kew. “I was loud in my admiration of his taste as soon as we had passed the front door. Every article of furniture seemed to have been selected with excellent judgment.”[30]

- The French lady’s maid seems to have instant recognition of the situation when Arthur leaves his bride on their first married night. After fully learning what has happened, Marie stares agape at Elsie, which sends Elsie into a tiff. Marie apologies: “Madame will excuse me […] I am not entirely used to English customs. It seems so droll to me that a bridegroom should leave his bride – [then abashed, as she feels she is only making it worse] Madame will pardon me.”[31]

- To a lesser extent, it is possible that many Gay readers would have regarded the entire character of Mamma as a camp figure. Further research may point in the direction of Cohen’s readership expecting and enjoying females who were more like resplendent queens than humdrum and overworked real women. Along with Mamma, the protagonist from Cohen’s novel My Footlight Husband comfortably falls into this category. What appealed to Victorian queens about these characters? They are poised, always fashion-forward and dressed perfectly. They are unflappable in any situation, obsessed with maintaining the appearance of youth, and not very much interested in children, especially not their own.

A whole other set of evidence is provided in clues to what it was like, in a practical way, to function as a Gay man in the late 19^th century. These items would pass by the attention of outsiders without much register at all, but would be instantly recognizable to those actively in the life.

 

- 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.

Part Five – Romantic Ideal

Damon and Who..? [50]

 

Under persecution their love held firm, and that, even to the point of death. What more romantic and inspiring portrayal of love has ever existed? One could say that this is the portrait of David and Jonathan as detailed in the Book of Samuel, and it is, but by the 19^th century, same-sex couples also had another example. The ancient source of the legend of Damon and Pythias survives in De Amicitiae Vinculo, or The Bonds of Partnership, by Valerius Maximus. This author was a Roman scholar and historian who lived at the time of Christ. The Bonds of Partnership was a collection of exemplary tales of same-sex couples and their brave deeds. Most of these are from Greek origins, and Valerius seems to have had a moralistic reason for collecting them. Namely, that in classical Greek society, male-male partnerships were both honored and honorable because they conformed (or, at least appeared so outwardly) to higher ethical codes of conduct than existed in the Roman tradition. True or not, the perception of an older and better-adjusted place for Gays in ancient Greek society was a constant source of inspiration for pre-Christian Romans.

In a much different age, there was a final flowering of Neo-Classical arts that included the rather surprising reappraisal of the Damon and Pythias legend. In 1821, Irish poet and playwright, John Banim (1789-1842),[51] produced a classical-style play on the subject in London to much acclaim. The play entered the cannon around the English-speaking world when it was published in 1829.[52] In the age it was written, romanticism was in full force, and there was not yet a trace of fear of Gay people existing that grew endemic by the end of the century. Banim could, without any fear of censure, be true to the original intent of the ancient source by having his men on stage be loving and tender. In Act V, Scene One, at the moment that Damon regains his senses and realizes that Pythias is indeed back to at least prevent Damon from dying alone, he tells his partner:

 

“Thy hand! – O, Let me grasp thy manly hand! –

It is an honest one, and so is mine!

They are fit to clasp each other!”[53]

 

Fraternity, or more plainly, brotherhood, is the loadstone of the play, and it appealed to an age that was already severely changed by the disorder and fractured life brought by the Industrial Revolution.[54] Perhaps it was viewed with nostalgic longing; a look back to the mystical “simpler age” that each and every era believes must have existed. The play’s popularity continued well past it contemporaries, and I can find a playbill for it as late as an 1889 production in Brisbane.[55] Again, for an insider, this portrayal of manly love must have been a breath of fresh air. It is possible, as much now and always, that money talks, and it were the queens that kept production in this play alive for so long, perhaps to the point where outsiders became suspicious of such male-male glorification.

Banim’s play inspired an American to found a brotherly origination after attending a production of Damon and Pythias in Washington D.C.. In 1864 Justus H. Rathbone (1839-1889) was an actor,[56] and was so inspired by the love of the same-sex couple, their bravery, their honesty, their fidelity, that he ritualized their story into a fraternal organization that could promote these ideals into the broader world. ‘The Knights of Pythias’ was the first such order to receive official legal backing via an Act of Congress. This came about at the urging of President Lincoln who had read and supported Rathbone’s prospectus.[57] Under the auspices of this group, books and beautifully romantic color lithographs of the happy couple were produced and distributed.[58] In their chief retelling of the legend in book form, we read that at the moment of rescue, one partner tells the other:

 

“Thou livest, best-loved brother,

and in thee, the half

of my own soul,

live I a life restored.”[59]

 

And that earlier, while the execution scaffold was being erected, among the crowd were special individuals who empathized with the lovers’ plight as only insiders could:

 

“And of the multitude around the block

[were] that band of Brothers, hither led

by mingled love and grief for him condemned,

feeling a tie that others cannot feel,

and knowing well [what] faith and Friendship are[.]”[60]

 

Here, we glimpse the special ‘initiated’ people of the group Damon and Pythias belonged to. Though we are in the audience, we too are included in ‘that band of Brothers’ to witness and knowingly experience the breadth of their love as only we can. Thanks to such popularization, Damon and Pythias took pride of place next David and Jonathan in 19^th Century Gay minds as model couples. The contemporary examples of commentary, and of story-retelling, and of the reproducing of images of this biblical couple in 19^th century cultures are far too many to elaborate here, for after all, it was David who tells the world of his Jonathan: “Thy love to me was more wonderful than the love of women.”[61] But of relevance to Cohen and our study here, is the particular rabbinical tradition that David and Jonathan’s love was pure and safe as long as neither sought advantage over the other.

The sages characterized the relationship between Jonathan and David in the following Mishnah:

“Whenever love depends on some selfish end, when the end passes away, the love passes away; but if it does not depend on some selfish end, it will never pass away. Which love depended on a selfish end? This was the love of Amnon and Tamar. And which did not depend on a selfish end? This was the love of David and Jonathan. (Avot 5:15)"

Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran (Spain, North Africa 14^th –15^th century) delineated the significance of this Mishnah:

“Anyone who establishes a friendship for access to power, money, or sexual relations; when these ends are not attainable, the friendship ceases…love that is not dependent on selfish ends is true love of the other person since there is no intended end.” (Magen Avot – abridged and adapted translation).[62]

 

For Cohen's couple, both men were safe (if a bit ostracized) and shielded by their wealth and elite standing. This relative anonymity was upset when Dill pressured Arthur to enter into what both men believed to be a marriage of convenience. Here the 'selfish end' brings down hardship and plight on the relationship. It was Cohen's great romantic masterstroke to have Dill rescue Arthur in New York, and by doing so, renounce any hope of societal standing, thus reducing themselves to the status of exiles, for love.

Inevitably, the continued popular success of Damon and Pythias by a 'certain crowd' drew the attention of some quick-witted men of letters. The great Victorian satirist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911), prepared a parodied poem and set of illustration for the lighthearted entertainment magazine Fun. In his regular column named Bab Ballads, he tackled the subject of 'a modern' Damon and Pythias. Here, in classic Gilbertonian-fashion, the law threatens the domestic bliss of a same-sex couple by turning a 'friendly-action' on inheritance protection into a harrowing trial. There is much understanding and sympathy from Gilbert on the problems that stand in the law of two legally independent men being recognized in even civil statue as forming a unit. The poem is sadly all to relevant for same-sex couples today who still struggle with getting the legal system to simply stand out of their way in matters of adoptions, forming unions, inheritance, immigration, and on and on. The entirety of this poem with Gilbert's comical drawings is included in Appendix 4.

What exactly the legendary love of the ancient couple meant to Cohen will need further research, but it seems clear from A Marriage Below Zero that Arthur and Dill are meant to fill the romantic potential of a modern Damon and Pythias. Ultimately Arthur's rash action is based not on threats to himself: exposure, ruin, trial, prison – no, it is based on every contemporary queen's highest ambitions – to live for love and die for it too, if need be. Cohen did after all live and write in a highly romantic age and he was skillful enough to give outsiders a seemingly moral lesson, while touching the hearts of his peers. To suppose that Arthur killed himself due to 'shame' is to impose an outsider's untenable prejudice on a man who is shown to have lived contentedly with himself and his partner. One can better argue that, in spite of the romantic overtones, Arthur was taking a practiced step as one last safeguard for Dill. Arthur could conceivably be arrested, tortured and forced to provide 'names.' This has been a common fear since the mid 19^th century introduction of homophobic laws. Arthur could have conceivably been compelled to testify against Dill under threat of his own arraignment. By taking himself out of the corrupt police hands, he at least could not be a weapon to seal Dill's fate. In this way, Arthur's sacrifice becomes Damon's sacrifice made manifest. In this way too, Cohen leaves open the door of an alternate ending – one where Dionysus/Elsie absolves them, and 'subsumes lust of punishment into the acceptance of mercy.' Such an ending in 1889 could not have been published.

 

 

Part Six – Legacy

In the Shadow of Death

 

Mitchell/Leavitt touched upon Cohen's book pre-shadowing the media circus that surrounded the Oscar Wilde trials.[63] While the Wilde testimony revolved mainly upon Wilde and the young men compelled to give evidence against him, the 'scandal' did not widen to charges against anyone else of his class, or better, like Lord Alfred Douglas. Far more apropos to the mood at the exact time of the release of Cohen's book is the Cleveland Street Scandal. In July 1889 media reports began to trickle out about a private residence where young men were making pocket money in the company of Earls and other Lordly Peers. The boys, under no-doubt heavy threat of hard-labor prison terms, squealed, and named names. In the weeks that followed, what issued were charges that the highest echelons of the British Empire were involved in a cover-up; English Lords escaping to France in the middle of the night; and yes, suicides. In the end, the only ones hauled before the mighty power of the bench and its powdered wigs? – the hapless working class teenagers, and sadly enough, they were the only ones imprisoned.[64] The most unlikely victim of the Cleveland Street Scandal was the second in line to the throne, Prince Albert Victor of Wales.[65] We are told that his father, Edward, Prince of Wales, put the kibosh on the investigation, and buckled-down his son with a formidable woman in the form of his wife-to-be, the future Queen Mary. The prospect of married life seemed to have suited Albert Victor as much as it had Arthur Ravener, for in a matter of weeks the 28-year old was dead. Amongst the Gay community at the time, it was speculated that the Prince had been 'removed' from the line of succession for his incorrigible Gayness.[66] The evidence for this comes in a series of letters he wrote to a female friend in the summer and fall of 1891 saying he was in love and happy. This was not with Mary, but suddenly in December, he proposed to her, and promptly became miserable. He died in January of '92, and Mary was quickly engaged and married to Albert Victor's younger brother, the future King George V.

This chain of events that rocked London in the second half of 1889 is eerily like what Cohen hinted Elsie read in the newspapers, and what sent her off to Paris to look for Arthur. So much so, that if it had happened before going to press, the book likely would have been altered, or perhaps dropped all together. For anyone who questions the 'realness' of Arthur's actions, one need only look at the real life victims of this contemporary media scandal.

The lack of even an attempt to see the world of Cohen's novel through the lens of its time seems to mark most critical analysis of the work. Somehow all attempts to view the novel from the empathetic standpoint of its contemporary Gay readers were lost to 20^th century commentators. In 1955, Noel Grade, writing for the publication associated with the pioneering Gay Rights group, The Mattachine Review, accused Cohen of creating "the accepted standard for homosexual novels in the years to follow." And in 1977, Roger Austin said the book was "anti-gay" because of Arthur's self-do-in.[67] To vilify Cohen's book as anti-gay and pin the start of the no-escape-but-self-murder genre of fiction is hopefully now untenable. The popularity of the book waned so fast that its one and only paperback printing can hardly have been in the library of every heterosexual writer of 'homosexual fiction' who gleefully sought out 'a fitting end' on their reviled characters.[68] On that front, the survival of the book at all was due to its isolated and loving protection on the shelves of Gay men – the very premise of the Mitchell/Leavitt collection. If these 19^th century Gay men had thought of the book as anti-gay, it would not survive today. As for a fatalistic view, what Great American Novel, from Alcott's Little Women to Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, and well beyond, does not have a death as its locus mundi? Are there serious, published accounts, that Alcott was anti-sister because she killed off Beth? Preposterous!

Death in fiction is the writer's oldest cliché, and death, particularly self-inflicted, is an apparent obsession of Gay artists. Whether Cohen fits this bill or not, one only need survey the popular Queer Cinema of our times to see how pervasive the linking of romance with death is. Some random examples of fatalistic films made by Gays for Gays are: Rebel Without a Cause (1955),[69] The Living End (1992), The Consequence (1977), The Fan (1981), Fox and His Friends (1974), Edward II (1991), Law of Desire (1987), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Borstal Boy (2000), Prick Up Your Ear (1987), Dream Boy (2008), Steam (1997), Day for Night (1973), The Betsy (1978), Justine (1969), Mala Noche (1986), Burnt Money (2000), Pretty Boy (1993), This Special Friendship (1964), Bangkok Love Story (2007), Cruising (1980), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), and on and on.[70] A serious study would be to determine why Gay culture continues to be so defeatist when we are told we have made so much progress. I doubt any of this can be laid at the feet of Cohen.

Rare are the exceptions of Gay films for Gay consumption that dare to feature equitable endings, where men are shown as not necessarily happy, but content in the struggle to lead a life together. While the above list was partial, the following are all the films – after long consideration and consultation with Russo – that I can think of: Luster (2002),[71] Maurice (1987), My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Latter Days (2003), The Two of Us (1987),[72] and Beautiful Thing (1996). The real courage is in showing that life goes on. True bravery is showing that men in love can carve out a space for themselves in this invidious world.

           

 

Part Seven – Justification

Touching upon my Foibles

 

In the months following the publication of A Marriage Below Zero, Cohen created a crime hunter, Ned Bachman, the New Orleans Detective. This was the golden age for detail-drenched crime stories and pithy sleuths that people could remember long after the case had been solved. The first Sherlock Holmes story to appear in print, A Study in Scarlet, came out in 1887, at Christmas time. But all in all, Cohen must have felt slighted when his publisher decided to release A Marriage Below Zero as a 50-cent pulp-fiction softback edition. I'm sure he felt the work deserved a rigid spine. However, it is easy to imagine that his editor informed Cohen there was no other way. Due to the gay, and thus illicit, content of the novel, it was going to be relegated to crime-fiction status, or not be published at all.

But it was published, and downtrodden man-loving men could read the remarkable. In the scene where Elsie has broken into their rental home, she huffs at Dill, demanding to know:

"And you – ?" I asked pointedly. […]

He turned away hastily for a moment. "I am his friend," then he said,

"and" – boldly – "I am not ashamed of it. We were at college together,

and our intimacy has been continued since those days. I will aid Arthur

Ravener whenever I can; I will do anything for him. He is my bosom

friend, and I am ready to say so before anybody. Now, are you

satisfied?

He snapped his fingers defiantly.[73]

An insider cheered; an insider said, 'You go, Dill!' and one could scarce hope to find a more defiant, more non-apologetic defense of same-sex love printed in the United States until after the Stonewall Riots. An insider never doubted that "society is to blame" as Elsie herself tells us.

So too society could be to blame if we follow Elsie's cryptic words about the demise of her father to its logical conclusion.

"My mother was left a widow when I was a baby. […] In reality it was the most satisfactory outcome of what I was always told was an extremely unhappy marriage. […] His death was a happy release for both. […] [M]amma looked upon her husband as an encumbrance, and an obstacle in the way of her social ambitions. […] When he has given you the protection of his honorable name, […] why, the most delicate thing he can then do, is to cease reminding you of these facts, by taking himself off."[74]

Since it is established that Mamma is a widow, the phrase 'take oneself off' can only mean suicide. But, why death? Are we not to understand Mamma's 'extremely unhappy marriage' as the fore figuring of Elsie's miserable nuptials? Is not her father's decision, Arthur's decision? And, for the same reasons? I have decided that for my libretto, the answers are yes.[75] Mamma and Elsie are not so different after all.

But what is my artistic justification for providing an equitable ending? Because an opera provides a unique opportunity to have my cake and eat it too – I can achieve Arthur's suicide and its consequences without killing him. A great tradition from the opera of the Age of Enlightenment was the Ombra scene; the picant inclusion of paranormal incidents in otherwise unflinchingly true-to-life portrayals. M. Night Shyamalan produced a half-fiction, half-reality TV documentary to promote his film The Village (2004). The fake half concerned a made up plot, where due to a near-death incident, Shyamalan has gained special insight. The true part was a simple snowy evening in Philadelphia where the camera encountered people on the street, or in the lobby of quiet office buildings. The person behind the camera asked these random people the very simple question: "Have you ever had a paranormal experience yourself?" The 'No's were filmed, the awkward half-grins, the 'are you serious?' looks, and then people began to be honest and relay that 'one time…' or 'once…' and soon a surprising number of people have been in touch with this thing our society tells us is more than rare. Rare is relative, but kept secret is not. The opera of the enlightenment knew this, and took advantage of it. I do so too, for it has the potential of being touchingly 'real' on the stage in a personal and private way – Elsie can see Arthur dead, but be the one who pulls him back from the brink.

If Elsie loves Arthur, truly loves him, she can do what she never had a chance to do in the book. If she loves him, her decision is an easy one, because it is the less painful of the two options. She doesn't have to like it; she can blame Arthur and Dill all she likes, blame Letty and Mamma too, but she knows the squareness of the guilt rests on her shoulders.

 

 

Part Eight - Conclusion

More Than the Sum of its Parts

 

There is much in Elsie that should be explored as a model of an early feminist outlook. She envies men because the have the "privilege" of doing exactly what they like,[76] and comes to emotional loggerheads precisely because, despite her best efforts, she cannot do as she likes. Cohen more than once relays Elsie as exhibiting what contemporary readers could comfortably diagnose from their armchairs as 'hysteria.' Like the made-up psychosis used to suppress a certain other element in society, these same medico-quacks created a condition to keep 'troublesome women' at bay, that is, to keep them quiet. Worse yet, is that these self-same male doctors created a 'treatment' in which manual stimulus of the clitoris to orgasm was the 'cure.' (And these 'doctors' called us perverts!) The long sad story of women being sexually abused in the name of 'science' deserves a fuller treatment, but for our purpose, I believe Cohen was skillfully illustrating that an equating of the status of Gays and women existed in the minds of the powers that would dominate them both. Both 'conditions' were made up excesses fundamentally meant to contain and control people. Both required treatments that were twisted and demeaning. Both 'conditions' were presented as weaknesses to be eradicated, and both were fear-mongered as a dire contagion that threatened society at large.[77]

Just as the best and brightest minds of the late 19^th century were actively imposing an outsider's view on any number of minority groups, outsiders have imposed their views on A Marriage Below Zero. They reduce Arthur and Dill to a nefarious set of deceptions, and likewise reduce these men to a 'nasty' set of habits, desires, inclinations – supply your own repressed, self-loathing adjective. An insider's view sees a great camp unraveling of a society that oppresses and destroys lives thoughtlessly. For insiders, the book is a parade of signposts for the initiated – for those with tongue firmly in cheek – and also full of elements only 'you' would recognize. These markers pass unseen by the outsider's attention, and harmlessly, through Elsie to the reader. An insider read a great love story between the lines, a secret place for their love to inhabit when times jeopardized their relationships with ever new cruelties, both medical and legal.[78]

Cohen's bravery was to skillfully resist the reduction of his male couple to a series of 'acts,' or worse yet – for it was then prevalent intellectual thought – 'impulses.' His men were simply a reflection of those undoubtedly around him. For even if Cohen was not Gay, being a man of the theater meant constant contact with queens, and these were the men well-endowed in the knowledge of heroic and romantic tales of the past.

Despite Karl-Maria Kertbeny's (1824-1882) best of motivations for coining his (ugly) hybrid 'H-word,' it was latched onto by the worst of 19^th century pseudo-medical quacks.[79] Suddenly men who had all along forged lives together were told they were sick. This mental schism, between 'feeling' well but being 'labeled' diseased, bore a heavy toll on the relationships they were naturally drawn to form, and broke any number of them up. This outsider interference was pervasive, threatening of both freedom and life, and led to an open season on criminal hunting of Gays for money through blackmail.

Part of what made Symond’s experience with his soldier in 1877 so powerful to him, is that he, through personal experience, was finally able to totally refute the outsiders’ view – the pathological-medical view – that had reduced his potential for love and happiness to psychotic tendencies. Imagine his surprise to find that he, and that his lover, after their act of love- making, were as natural as anything imaginable. The very nonchalant demeanor of his partner must have reminded the Whitman-loving Symonds of the old man’s poem:

 

Yet comes one, a city boy,

And when we must part,

Kisses me lightly,

Yet still full of robust love.

And I in pub or crosswalk,

Kiss him in return.

American men,

We are those two natural,

And fine nonchalant persons.[80]

 

Symonds, in that non-descript and anything but elegant rented room, was able to carve out space to exist with another man on the level of equals who have come together willingly. For him this experience of creating equality via love was more profound than what marriage between people of the opposite sex, ever unequal, could possibly offer.

In the crucible of the social, political, and pseudo-medical witch-hunting of the third quarter of the 19^th century, Gay people ceased to exist. They had their lives replaced and amputated down to a stump that marginalized them to a series of acts, or uncontrolled impulses, and all the other slurs that deprived them of the fundamental right to exist unencumbered by others’ hostilities. Cohen dared in 1889 to show two men, not as a series of acts, or impulses, but Men who love, and Men, imperfect as they are, who would give all to keep that love safe from a hostile and murderous world. Good on him!

 

 

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