So what was her 'velvet glass'--?

[bellatrys]

Revisiting and visiting John Donne's verse brought more than one not usually anthologized to my awareness, but the most stunning to date, I think, would have to be his second Elegy, aka "The Anagram", which starts in something of the vein of a more Xtreme "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"* and rapidly goes downhill - or somewhere, into

Comments

[elmocho]

These lines are not found in all versions of this he sent out, btw, which could mean that this was an afterthought

There are manuscript versions of Thomas Nashe's "Choice of Valentines" which leave out all mention of dildos and premature ejaculation. My Professor theorized these went to the more conservative households.

I'm still trying to track down rather Nashe was directly involved with converting "dildo" from a standard ballad-refrain nonsense word into its current usage.

The severely-abridged editions, eh?

[bellatrys]

There are manuscript versions of Thomas Nashe's "Choice of Valentines" which leave out all mention of dildos and premature ejaculation. My Professor theorized these went to the more conservative households.

I wonder if that was his own doing, or proto-Bowdlerization?

I'm still trying to track down rather Nashe was directly involved with converting "dildo" from a standard ballad-refrain nonsense word into its current usage.

According to the stuff I dowsed up trying to research scholarly commentary on Elegy #2, Nashe's Valentine (aka The Dildo Poem) is the first known modern-sense usage of the term in English, and it takes a while to catch on. So, um, maybe...

Re: The severely-abridged editions, eh?

[elmocho]

My line is "'Dildo' used to be a ballad refrain, like 'Hey Nonny-Nonny' :'Diddle-de-dee-de-dildo.'Thomas Nashe changed all that."

The stuff that circulated in manuscript depended on the whims of those writing it down. They had far more free editorial policies, so they would have no problem with leaving stuff out or putting stuff in. There's a sonnet by John Davies with a last line of "Hark! In thy ear! I can ( ) you soundly."

Items in the blank range from "fuck" to "Kiss" to leaving it blank.

Somewhere in one of John Marston's plays, there are two arguing pages named Dildo and Cazzo. By then, the joke was widespread. There's also some of this in The Winter's Tale-- I could find it later, if you want.

There was a lot of borrowing of Italian pop culture

[bellatrys]

going on in the English renaissance, Ariosto and Boccacio and Petrarch and and (obviously) even less reputable authors like Aretino. It could be that Nashe chose it *because* it sounds vaguely "Italianate".

[fledgist]

My first thought was that 'velvet glass' was an allusion to the female pudend, but that wouldn't make sense. Velvet-backed hand-mirror might.

However, on the 'marmosit'. The OED notes that of a man it could (inter alia) be derogatory or mean a favourite or minion, but it could also be " Applied to a woman or child (as a term of endearment or playful reproach). Obs."

If only there were IRC transcripts from the 1600s...

[bellatrys]

BenJ: Yo, jd, WTF is a veluet glasse?

jd: u know, one of those [fancy imported sex toys]/[hand mirrors with the plush backs from a bedroom set]/[who knows what]

BenJ: whoa dude, nobodyes gonna know what that is. Y not just say candlestick???

jd: cos EVERYBODIE says candlestick, its not fuNE NE moore

BenJ: k but i still think tis teh stooopit

poetchris: u online jack? just got this Flavia thinge, whats te deal w the marmosit? like, is that a LITERAL monkey (and, just, ew) or is it meant 2 B some trusted friend of the family, to juxtapose with thys poor jolthead's enemies, right B4 it?

Re: If only there were IRC transcripts from the 1600s...

[fledgist]

I thinke BenJ woulde haue sayde 'candelsticke', but thatte is jvst mee.

[bellatrys]

[snerk]

[rikibeth]

on the "hard to clean" aspect... the HANDLE of the looking glass probably wouldn't be velvet, even if the back of the glass were.

well, the 19th century versions I've seen

[bellatrys]

and the modern replicas thereof, do have velvet (or padded satin) going all the way down the handle to provide a comfy non-slip grip, probably first glued down and then stitched, to keep it from coming loose and shifting under stress. Kind of like a velvet-covered high-heeled shoe from the 19th century.

The big problem is, that while more ordinary household items have been saved and kept in museums than one might guess, they aren't usually on display (the Ashmolean is rather boggling in its devotion to the reverse - entire room filled with long cases containing hundreds and hundreds of ordinary bronze Bronze Age safety pins, frex) and still less likely to be found in art books or online collections. (Though I would also bet money that somewhere out there is an entire volume with footnotes and illustrations devoted entirely to articles de toilette across history, if only we knew where to look...)

Re: well, the 19th century versions I've seen

[rikibeth]

Well, if you ever run across that volume with footnotes and illustrations, let me know. I would totally spend a hundred dollars for it!

I bet it would have pictures of the carved, fine-toothed combs that fascinated me in the Musee Cluny. The medieval noblewomen must all have had fine straight hair, since there was no way I could have dragged one of those through my curly mop without breaking it!

and all those roman hand-mirrors with the mythological scenes...

[bellatrys]

One thing that always has frustrated me, as a historical costume buff, is trying to figure out how things fastened together and were made to stay in place. Most of the traditional illustration references don't even *address* that, and while it isn't a problem for artists, it *is* if you're trying to replicate a costume for wear. So usually you end up jury-rigging something with modern hairpins, duct tape, etc but obviously that isn't authentic, and you know that there had to be some way they were making it work back then with what they had on hand!

[baron_elric]

Thanks for the diverting side trip into Elizabethan verse.

The thoughts that come to my mind are these:

"If redd and Whyte, and each good qualitye . . ." seems to me that, in addition to her other sterling qualities, Mr. Donne may have been referring to her indiscriminate consumption of wine, suggesting both volume and the mixture of different kinds. I think that, even in the sixteenth century there was a belief that too much mixing of different wines could lead to a bad morning after. At least, it strikes me as a secondary meaning to the interpretation you present, and I can easily imagine Donne enjoying the dual thought.

As for the velvet glass, could this be a sidelong reference to the use of a mirror in an...unusual way, and that it shall now have had occasion to reflect something other than the face of its user? Just a thought, perhaps colored by a current professional project that has me reading modern pornography and being paid for it. Too many "velvet folds."

[fledgist]

Well that last is what my first thought was about. But it made no sense as something on her night stand. And why 'veluet glass' in that case, unless as a reference to cunnilingus?

"velvet" however modifies "glass" in that line

[bellatrys]

it isn't a freestanding noun, and the pattern is [known object], [known object], [___] where the joke seems to be that even inanimate objects will resist like an unwilling slaveboy, so if "veluet glasse" is really supposed to mean "maidservant's tongue" it breaks up the pattern very badly by introducing another hypothetical character to the narrative, and I don't see any way to get around the fact that "glass" has the commonest meaning of either the vitreous substance, or as an abbreviation of looking glass, in English lit, I'm not coming up with any examples of it being commonly used as a euphemism for anything sexual (I'm not even sure, altho' I know now that glass dildos are not the innovation I thought they were, that they were common enough formerly that the word "glass" would itself have the connotative effect on the typical reader, in such a context, as "rabbit" or "pearl" do nowdays.) I don't have ready access to the OED at this point, it's a major hassle to get to the library for me now, but I'm afraid that later uses of "

Re: "velvet" however modifies "glass" in that line

[fledgist]

There's no entry for 'velvet glass' in the OED. It's the first place I looked.

It might mean 'maidservant's cunny' rather than tongue, though.

[violaswamp]

Fascinating! I hope you keep doing these. Actually, I just had a rather frustrating discussion with someone who kept asserting--without bothering with little things like evidence or reason--that Back In The Day, without divorce or feminism, people were ever so much happier in their marriages because they weren't so selfish and individualistic and neurotic. So this kind of thing is especially hilarious for me to read.

oh yeah, I always love that

[bellatrys]

fact-free arguments "from history" by those who are allergic to research. An afternoon spent looking up the microfilm articles from the local paper on a hundred-year-old murder case for a library patron disabused me of that illusion in high school - that is, whatever remained of it after having read nearly all of Sherlock Holmes in junior high!

Here's a relevant story I just stumbled across while pulling up links for some idiot on water-torture - again, not something you hear about in the idyllic/idolized versions of history!