1890s Literary Hostesses

The literary hostess is a figure, who pops up repeatedly in the biographies of all my 1890s writers. Married, or unmarried, she was usually, but not always a woman of means, who loved literature, and the arts. Her motivation for hosting the great writers of the day ranged from simple interest, to loving a particular writer, or even trying to advance her own writing career. A literary hostess might have also been an author in her own right, but she also helped to build the community of writers in London in the 1890s.

'A Five O'Clock Tea' (1893).

In his poem, "Slightly Foxed," William Plomer writes about the life of the husband of Gloria Jukes, an 1890s literary hostess.

Ignored in her lifetime, he paid for her fun
And enjoyed all the fuss. When she died he was done.
He sold up the house and retired from the scene
Where nobody noticed that he’d ever been.

His memoirs unwritten (though once he began ‘em)
He lives on a hundred and fifty per annum
And once in the day totters out for a stroll
To purchase the Times, two eggs and a roll.

Up to now he has paid for his pleasures and needs
With books he had saved and that everyone reads,
Signed copies presented by authors to Gloria
In the reign of King Edward and good Queen Victoria.

They brought in fair prices but came to an end,
Then Jukes was reduced to one book-loving friend [...]

Roger D. Sell accurately describes it as "a poem about the fickleness, bitchiness and transience of metropolitan literary circles." All of which are qualities the imagination, however unfairly, immediately transfers onto the literary hostess herself.

Louise Chandler Moulton

Louise Chandler Moulton was an American poet, writer, critic, and outstanding literary hostess. Willis J. Buckingham writes:

Few American women were more widely known as writers, and none was so conspicuous and active as a literary hostess, both at home and in England, as Louise Chandler Moulton. Living in each city for half the year, she presided over notable weekly salons in Boston and London for several decades. She knew everyone, from Longfellow and Emerson to Ezra Pound. Her poems, travel sketches, and literary letters, were widely admired. Her own verse was superficially like Dickinson's in being highly personal, brief, and frequently concerned with unfulfilled love and the transience of life. In its graceful, faded diction and utterly conventional pressed-rose melancholy, her verse was eminently suited to popular taste.

The life of the literary hostess, and author, as Moulton lived it, illustrates how a life of letters in the 1890s needn't be a solitary life at all. Their writers groups were fine salons in major cities, organized by women.

Some of these women have also been characterized as the "Grand Dames" of the 1890s, rich women, who served as patrons of the arts, like Annie Horniman and Lady Ottoline Morrell.

Lady Ottoline Morrell (1912)

Lady Ottoline didn't really become a literary hostess until after the turn of the century, but I couldn't resist including her sassy picture here, and taking a moment to note the kind of influence a woman like her could have on literature. She had an open marriage, and carried on many love affairs, while caring for the many children her husband had through his extramarital relationships. Among many others, her lovers included the philosopher Bertrand Russel, and the historian Roger Fry. Lady Ottoline is said to have been immortalized in literature through the characters of Mrs Bidlake in Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point, Hermione Roddice in H.D. Lawrence's Women in Love, and as Lady Chatterly, among many others.

Lady Jane Francesca Agnes Wilde a.k.a. 'Speranza.'

Oscar Wilde was raised by one of the greatest literary hostesses of the late-nineteenth century, though his mother's salons began to peter off in the 1890s, due to her old age and failing health. It's said that once someone asked Speranza how she attracted such interesting people to her salons, and she replied: "By interesting them, of course!"

Speranza's salons were said to be crammed full of famous people from the time her sons were children. She entertained celebrities and writers by candlelight, and liked to keep the atmosphere dark because it encourage "bawdy talk."

Speranza is another one of those literary hostesses, who was an incredibly successful author in her own right. At one point in her life, she was considered Ireland's National Poetess.

I once called Hall Caine's wife, Mary, an unlikely archivist, but the truth seems to be that the women of London's literary circle in the 1890s were the keeper of records, and the organizers of events, as much, if not more than, their male counterparts. Perhaps, for some, it was because they needed these literary connections to get their work published, but so did the male writers. That's why so many attended their parties and salons.

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1890s Male Body Image

Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel's 1898 selfie.

Victorian sexuality can be approached from so many directions, including (but not limited to) body image, sexual orientation, masturbation, prostitution, sex education, disease, religion, marriage, and pornography. All of these aspects overlap and influence each other, creating tremendous diversity in attitudes toward sex at any given point in history. Each of these factors provide the context in which sexual identities are created. This post is the first in a series of posts that seek to explore that context from the 1890s with an emphasis on male sexuality.

Body Image

Facial hair is the first thing that comes to mind about how Victorian men looked. Men styled their facial hair as elaborately as women styled their hair. As it is today, hair was important to Victorian men, and the market knew it. Men could buy elixirs to prevent or cure hair loss, to make their mustaches and beards grow faster, or to hold them in place. Special tea cups and spoons were designed for mustaches. Contraptions were being invented to curl a man's mustache; others were intended to hold it in place after it was curled. Lead combs promised to get rid of grey hairs by dying them black.

From the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 1884.

I've already begun to address body image, in my post on the perfect man. While women's fashion was beginning to realize that women's clothing was so constrictive that women couldn't move, Eugen Sandow's role as the perfect man illustrated that a man's ideal body emphasized function, as well as form. The form of a man's body indicated the feats of strength he was capable of performing.

Eugen Sandow's feats of strength.

For men who wanted to perform feats of
strength, but didn't believe they could do it.

Strong women, like Mary Arniotis, existed, but Arniotis was the exception. She was born into a circus family, and little is know about her life, but her most famous photo is done in the style of the strong man.

Mary Arniotis in the 1890s.

Sandy became the founder of body building as a sport, and based the ideal measurements for a male body on classical statues, often posing for cabinet cards as if he were a statue himself.

Clearly, Sandow didn't invent the 'classical' male form. In the late-18th and early-19th centuries, men wore corsets to artificially achieve the ideal shape. By the 1890s, they were using electric belts, though the tone in advertisements for these belts emphasize fitness, health, and as a cure for "weakness."

Ad dated 5 January 1900.

Exercise, the way we do it at a gym, increased in popularity by the 1890s, especially at spas, like the Zander Institute in Stolkhome, where wealthy Londoners could go to get healthy by using machines like these:

All three of these images are from the Zander Institute.

These institutions of health treated everything that ailed the 1890s Londoner, including obesity.

Doctors, who studied obesity in the 19th-century, were already beginning to acknowledge the problem of medical professionals refusing to treat obese patients. Doctors, like Horace Dobell, Isaac Burney Yeo, and John Ayrton Paris were already making the connection between obesity, diet, and a sedentary lifestyle. As early as 1825, those struggling with their weight were warned against trusting fad diets, but people were still doing whatever it took to get the ideal shape, even when their efforts were in vain.

Smartly dressed fat man sitting in a chair.

Another aspect of body image is fashion. For as long as it has existed, fashion has played an important part in human sexuality. In the late-19th century, women's accessories were fetishized and used for flirting, and cross-dressing was something loads of middle-class Victorians wanted to do in front of a camera.

If he couldn't lift a family of six, a gentleman could still demonstrate his ability through his status, indicated through the number and quality of coats he wore. A man's coat could indicate his interests, his social status, and his ability to provide for a family. As illustrated by the photos above, clothing played a huge role in gender, and they knew it!

Cross dressing happened in literature, and theatre, where the clothes defined the person's gender. In stories, a woman could put on her brother's clothes, and make everyone think she was him.

So it was the clothes and ability to pick things up that made the man in terms of body image. Soon, I will follow up with a post about who Victorian men wanted to 'pick up.'

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Images of London in 1899

On the last day of the 19th century, a large stone at Stonehenge fell over. The collapse changed people's attitudes toward Stonehenge, as people started thinking of it as a national treasure.

Repairing Stonehenge in 1900

The falling of the stone, to me, represents the need that Victorians created in us to preserve so many aspects of our lives "for prosperity's sake." Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone for the Victoria and Albert Museum on 17 May 1899, as her last public engagement.

Laying the foundation stone of the Victoria & Albert Museum at South Kensington:
the Queen's arrival at the pavilion. The Illustrated London News (20 May 1899)

The National Trust acquired Wicken Fen, the nation's oldest wetland national reserve.

In transportation news, the first motorized bus was run by the Motor Traction Company between Kensington and Victoria in 1899. Horses were expensive to feed and care for, needing attention round the clock, while they worked only a small proportion of the day. There were many experiments in steam, with batteries and petrol engines, as engineers tried to find the most economic and reliable way of replacing horses.

Without further ado, pictures of London in 1899.

Motor Traction Company 1899. 

If London Were Like Venice: Oh! That It Were’
From Harmsworth’s Magazine (The London Magazine)
Click here for more pictures from this article.

Children in a London alley (1899)

John Atkinson Grimshaw Paintings, The Strand, London, 1899.

Beestar Motor Tricycle with Gun replacing the front forks. London 1899.

The Tower of London (1899)

Chess Club, London 1899.

Mile End Road, June 1899.

The Marylebone Street Station of the Great Central Railway, 1899.

London, 1899, by Léonard Misonne

London, 1899, by Léonard Misonne

The Royal College of Surgeons' Museum circa 1899.

London 1899

Montgomery and Stone at the Palace Theatre 1899

Lillie Langtry 1899

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet
Princess's Theatre, London, 1899. 

Elsie Maitland & George Kirby's Wedding 1899

The London School of Tropical Medicine, Royal Albert Dock, 1899. 

Rear view over the roof of Temple station in 1899

Program for the laying of the Foundation Stone
at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A bird shop on Neal Street (1899)

A "lady" photographed by Millon E. Mallett,
258 Brixton Hill, S.W. London 1899

Aldgate from Mitre Street 1899

15 & 16 Stratton Street, Piccadilly, London 1899.

Nina Boucicault, 11 February 1899

A November Morning
the Embankment, London
by Harold W. Lane (1899).

A stereoscopic image of Holborn Viaduct 1899.

Family tea party at Royal Holloway 1899.

Samuel (Mark Twain) and Olivia Clemens lounging:
taking the air in London 1899.

Dr. Bucke seated in the Medical Superintendent's office of
the London Asylum for the Insane (1899)

Want more? Go further back to Images of London in 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892,1893,1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1898!

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Bram Stoker & Oscar Wilde Kiss & Tell

After many years of lipstick kisses, Oscar Wilde moved to a new tomb in 2011

How did Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde feel about kissing in their writing? I've talked about dancing, and women, and other things. So what about kisses?

Let's start with the Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

[Sybil Vane] was free in her prison of passion. Her prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called on memory to remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him back. His kiss burned again upon her mouth. Her eyelids were warm with his breath.

From the TV series Penny Dreadful

I was once told that people kiss because it engages so many of the senses: touch, taste, smell... In that passage, this certainly seems true. Sybil is just remembering Dorian's kiss, and the memory of it activates all of these senses. It's quite different from how she kisses her mother.

Sybil rushed to her, flung her arms round her neck, and kissed her. 

When it comes to kissing family members, Sybil likes to take a running leap.

"You might keep some of your kisses for me, Sybil, I think," said the lad [her brother] with a good-natured grumble."

Ah! but you don't like being kissed, Jim," she cried. "You are a dreadful old bear." And she ran across the room and hugged him.

But it seems Sybil is wrong about how much her brother likes being kissed.

There was jealousy in the lad's heart, and a fierce murderous hatred of the stranger who, as it seemed to him, had come between them. Yet, when her arms were flung round his neck, and her fingers strayed through his hair, he softened and kissed her with real affection. 

He even kisses their mother before he leaves. I have to say that there's not this much kissing in my family. We kiss children, and spouses, that's about it. If we ever kiss each other, it's on the cheek. Absolutely none of this "real affection" and hair-touching that Oscar Wilde is talking about.

Dorian Gray (2009)

But back to Sybil and Dorian. There's a big difference in how the two of them remember kissing that reflects on how they each feel about their relationship. As I said before, Sybil's memory is very visceral, whereas Dorian's memory of it literally focuses on the art.

"After the performance was over, I went behind and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly there came into her eyes a look that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can't describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-coloured joy. She trembled all over and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can't help it. Of course, our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don't know what my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don't care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth."

Spoiler: Dorian loves Sybil for her art, but doesn't like the person she really is. He leaves her. She's not very happy about that.

"I think I should never have known it if you had not kissed me—if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me."

That is part of a desperate plea on her part.

Sybil Vane commits suicide, and Dorian imagines kissing himself, while looking at his hideous portrait.

Once, in boyish mockery of Narcissus, he had kissed, or feigned to kiss, those painted lips that now smiled so cruelly at him.

But, when she's dead, he does try to get some memorial of her.

"You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil. I should like to have something more of her than the memory of a few kisses and some broken pathetic words."

Moving on to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).

Immediately, the kisses become more sexual, as Jonathan Harker is in Dracula's castle with the three brides of Dracula.

I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

“Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin.” The other added:

“He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all.”

"Yours is the right to begin" is an interesting choice of words, most likely borrowed from the grimoires to give this scene an occult feel.

Of course, the Count saves Jonathan from this 'terrifying' scene, but promises the ladies they can kiss him at will, when he has fulfilled his use.

Big surprise in Dracula is that vampires love to kiss.

But there's also some regular courting going on in this story. There's some kissing when Lucy tells Mr Morris that her heart belongs to another, then as he leaves, he says:

‘Little girl, I hold your hand, and you’ve kissed me, and if these things don’t make us friends nothing ever will. Thank you for your sweet honesty to me, and good-bye.’

 Of course, the man Lucy loves loves her back.

Besides, it was all so confused; it seemed only a moment from his coming into the room till both his arms were round me, and he was kissing me. I am very, very happy, and I don’t know what I have done to deserve it.

Mina and Lucy in NBC's TV series Dracula.

Much has been written to compare Mina and Lucy. Lucy kisses people when she is breaking up with them, she kisses passionately, with both arms around her. Mina is married and her kisses to Jonathan are promises. Lucy dies because of vampires, whereas good men are able to save Mina's soul. Is this a commentary on women's sexuality? Yes, it probably is. But I like it when Mina and Lucy kiss each other. In fact, this is probably my favourite line in the whole book. From Lucy to Mina:

Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband.

When Lucy is dying, and under Van Helsing's care, he gives her fiancé permission to kiss her. Implicit in this is that when a woman is sick, she no longer has the authority to offer, or deny, kisses to her intended.

“The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he shall have presently.” [Van Helsing]

Lucy actually thanks Van Helsing for this aspect of his 'service' with a kiss.

Very shortly after she opened her eyes in all their softness, and putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, took Van Helsing’s great brown one; drawing it to her, she kissed it. “My true friend,” she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, “My true friend, and his! Oh, guard him, and give me peace!”

“I swear it!” he said solemnly, kneeling beside her and holding up his hand, as one who registers an oath. Then he turned to Arthur, and said to him: “Come, my child, take her hand in yours, and kiss her on the forehead, and only once.”

Of course, when Lucy is dead, Arthur kisses her corpse.

he went back and took her dead hand in his and kissed it, and bent over and kissed her forehead.

But we can't overlook the fact that, in Dracula, kisses are contagious. As Van Helsing explains:

Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss which you know of before poor Lucy die; or again, last night when you open your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would all time make more of those Un-Deads that so have fill us with horror.

 So, after Lucy dies, they have to really kill her. Then, Van helping says:

“And now, my child, you may kiss her. Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have you to, if for her to choose. For she is not a grinning devil now—not any more a foul Thing for all eternity. No longer she is the devil’s Un-Dead. She is God’s true dead, whose soul is with Him!”

Arthur bent and kissed her...

Next, people start kissing Mina. Van Helsing kisses and is kissed by her, as acknowledgement of their friendship. After Mina's own husband kisses her, he asks God to bless her.

After Mina becomes sick, she polices her own kissing.

Winona Ryder as Mina (1992).

“Unclean, unclean! I must touch him or kiss him no more. Oh, that it should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may have most cause to fear.”

The message here seems to be that virtuous married women, although not immune to corruption, have more control over their own kisses, and, by extension, their own bodies. As is clear in this scene, where Mina is laying ill.

Then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and, after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly.

In that kissing scene, Mina chooses who gets to kiss her and where, with her husband protectively watching over her.

Mina and Jonathan's kisses continue to be followed by promises, even when given to cement friendships.

Mina and I both felt so, and simultaneously we each took one of the old man’s hands and bent over and kissed it. Then without a word we all knelt down together, and, all holding hands, swore to be true to each other.

As they ride through the snow in pursuit of the Count, Mina is seeking the three women her husband wrote about.

It was as though my memories of all Jonathan’s horrid experience were befooling me; for the snow flakes and the mist began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him.

Kisses that are uncontrolled make men weak, in Dracula.

Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss—and man is weak. 

By comparing kisses in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula, the message we get from both of them is that kisses need to mean the same thing to both (or all) the parties involved. Also, it's possible that there was more kissing in the Wilde family than there should have been!

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