More excitement from the CHAOS list...
Subject: List bounce
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 08:26:15 -0400
From: listadmin
To: "Anthea Sharp"
Anthea, hi, as Chaos Moderator I've had another one of those weird emails sent by the English Juliet Moody bounce because she's not actually a member of the list- you think she would have figured this out by now. Anyway, as usual, thought I'd best send it on to you, this one's a ripper.
Enjoy,
SJK
Subject: I Will Not Be Your Ganymede or your Aunt Sally either
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 08:26:15 -0400
From: "Juliet Moody"
Reply-To: CHAOS - Captain Hornblower and the Age of Sail
To: CHAOS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU
Look, Anthea, you never answer my bloody emails these days, or my phone calls, so it's your own fault I'm going to have to say this in a public forum. Lay off the Dalek cracks. This has long gone beyond a joke, you know perfectly well what I was doing with that sink plunger, and it makes me pretty damn angry that you should let our personal history get mixed up like this in really important questions of authorship and attribution. And behind my back on a list I'm not even a member of - I shouldn't be surprised at it any longer, I suppose, any more than I'm surprised you should be participating in that joke of a list, it's got the highest proportion of crackpots in the field, which, let's face it, is saying something. At least I still have a few friends, who'll forward me material I need to know about BECAUSE IT CONTAINS PERSONAL ATTACKS ON ME. Why are you so keen to abuse me in public? Haven't you hurt me enough already? Do you call this professional behaviour?
And I can't believe some of the utter rubbish those idiots are spouting. Some of the most basic errors - they've picked up on the most misguided and dubious scholarship, no evidence on earth seems to be able to keep them away from the old Victorian error of conflating the two clearly distinct Archibald Kennedys (half of them think I'm the same person as my irritating American namesake too), they've got all the romantic twaddle that Victorian baggage implies too, with an extra seasoning of smugness because they know that far from indulging in a series of manly platonic relationships, Hornblower would fuck anything in a uniform, and it thrills their repressed little midwestern hearts to be able to say so at great length. But it all comes back to the same question, doesn't it: what about the women? I ask you, have any of them ever even read Lady Barbara's diaries? The 1938 edition, for all its problems and its gaps, can be found in any research library, if not yet on the internet (which I think is the real reason none of these American nutters ever bother to read it). Despite all that theory you go in for, Anthea, you're a decent scholar, when you put in the effort. Why don't you point them at some of the obvious sources? Springing to mind for instance is one of the best known of Lady Barbara's verses:
My golden hair once drew your gaze
My eyes of blue returned it;
You loved my face, those shipboard days,
Best when the sun had burned it.
I thought our star was bright and new,
To the future it would guide us.
I thought our souls together grew
Despite what lay behind us.
But now I see there is a shade
Which always stands between us.
My gold and blue and brown are made
To colour memory's greyness.
Your sun once set most cruelly
But I, love, bring you dawn,
And hope now you will finally see:
The past is dead and gone.
Pretty solid on the "dead and gone" there, I think, and that's just the first thing that happened to mind. What about those entries in Maria Hornblower's account book for memorial donations? The accounts of Edrington's several duels fought over Kennedy's memory, including the Earl's own letter about the second? What about the bloody tombstone in Kingston, for God's sake?
Still, I can't blame you for not arguing with these "Live Kennedy" nutters. Just for not arguing with me. Don't ignore me again, Anthea, don't do this to me. Or I might do something you'll regret.
Love,
Dr Juliet Moody
Principal Lecturer in Women's Studies
School of Historical and International Studies
De Montfort University