The Lost Properties of Love

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The Lost Properties of Love Page 18

by Sophie Ratcliffe


  eternullity, see Maurice Blanchot’s review of Henri Lefebvre, ‘the everyday is our portion of eternity: the eternullity of which Laforgue speaks’, Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, tr. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 245

  I don’t like mountains, quoted in Richard Davenport-Hines, Auden (London: Minerva, 1995), 98

  Baker Street to Moorgate Street

  Annette believed in the telephone, Iris Murdoch, The Flight from the Enchanter (London: Random House, 2009), 242

  pasticcio of rain, ‘Kate Field on London’, St Louis Globe Democrat, 8 November 1885, 169, 14

  black fumes, shrill whistles, George Gissing, In the Year of Jubilee (Createspace, 2014), 146

  small pear-shaped wooden instrument, Kate Field, The History of Bell’s Telephone (London: Bradbury, Agnew, 1878), 14–17, quoted in Gary Scharnhorst, Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 126

  every house will be connected, Kate Field, The History of Bell’s Telephone, 126

  a large party of swells, Kate Field to Edmund Clarence Stedman, 14 March 1878, Kate Field: Selected Letters, ed. Carolyn J. Moss (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 141

  If you like it I will take you, Anthony Trollope to Kate Field, ‘Monday Morning’, circa 1873–80, Letters 2, 1000

  If you are going out of town, let me know when you go, Anthony Trollope to Kate Field, 3 June 1868, Letters 1, 432

  If you’ll go down close to the sea … as you please, Anthony Trollope to Kate Field, 8 July 1868, Letters 1, 437–8

  black phantom, Anthony Trollope to Kate Field, 13 July 1868, Letters 1, 439

  enveloped in buffalo furs, Anthony Trollope, ‘Miss Ophelia Gledd’, Early Short Stories, ed. John Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 450

  have liked to cross the Rocky Mountains, ibid.

  ray of light, Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, ed. Nicholas Shrimpton, 195

  in the corner, ‘Recollections by Kate Field’, New York Tribune, 24 December 1880, quoted in Whiting, 397

  one of the ‘taking’ things of the season, see the Hartford Courant, 20 March 1878, 1, quoted in Scharnhorst, 129

  St Petersburg Station

  l’exécution est de plus en plus difficile … parce que j’ai vidé mon sac, Gustave Flaubert, letter to Ernest Feydeau, January/February 1868, repr. in La Correspondance de Flaubert: étude et repertoire critique (Paris: Nizet, 1968), 519

  My description of Brent Cross Shopping Centre is indebted to Nilu Zia’s ‘A Love Letter to Brent Cross, London’s Least Cool Shopping Centre’, Vice, 7 March 2016, https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/mvkawb/love-letter-40-years-of-brent-cross

  microcosm of our world and identity, Kerry Potter, ‘What to Know When Buying a New Handbag’, The Pool, 21 February 2017, https://www.the-pool.com/fashion/fashion-honestly/2017/8/kerry-potter-on-what-to-know-when-buying-a-new-handbag

  a particular fear: of injury, of discomfort, of boredom, of attack, quoted in Robert Moor, On Trails: An Exploration (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 325

  Perhaps even her tears. I owe this idea to the beautiful essay by Axelle Ropert, who writes of Mary Poppins’ bag ‘si ce sac généreux en démonstations colorées témoignait aussi de la pudeur de Mary, recelant toutes les larmes incolores que’elle a voulu garder pour elle?’, ‘12 films, 12 sacs. Une anthologie’ in Le Cas du Sac, sous la direction de Farid Chenoune (Paris: Hermès, 2004)

  a womb veil, also known as the ‘Ladies’ patent shield’, or ‘The Wife’s Protector’ was available, in the late nineteenth century by mail order for about $6

  Goole to Thorne North

  You exhibitionist, P. J. Harvey, ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’, Dry, written by P. J. Harvey, produced by Rob Harvey and P. J. Harvey, performed by P. J. Harvey, 1992, Vinyl

  All remaining references taken from The Times, 1875:

  LOST, A CARRIAGE CLOCK, 4 January

  FIVE POUNDS REWARD, 7 January

  nothing of value … which are important only to the owner. See, for example, the entries for 15 December, 19 June, 14 October

  a London dock warrant, 26 October

  a cane of Brazilian palm, 16 January

  a map of the British Channel, 25 November

  an opal brooch, 18 May

  a small case of surgical instruments, 4 August

  BALLOON LOST, 12 August

  AMULET, 30 August

  WILL a Black Swan, 24 December

  A young gentleman, age 26, 28 January, 2 February, 10 February, 11 February, 13 February

  ONE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD – MISSING, since 22nd January, a GENTLEMAN, 6 February

  lost gold Albert chain, 4 January

  FRED D.L., 4 January

  a black bearskin carriage-rug, 21 May

  LOST, on a Friday night, 15 January

  LOST. – TWENTY POUNDS REWARD shall be given for a BROWN LEATHER CASE, 7 January

  FRED D.L. – There will be a letter, 15 January

  A.T. – If you return at once, 15 January

  T. to W. – Meet me on Monday or Tuesday, 16 January

  LOST, during the last fortnight, 23 January

  LOST – A lady, on alighting from the train, 9 February

  MOTHER, Dear, 6 February

  BLACK BAG RECEIVED, 19 May

  MANUSCRIPT LENT, 21 May

  TWO POUNDS REWARD, 19 June

  LOST, on Tuesday, either in Chapel-street or Belgrave-square, 17 June

  BLACK PORTMANTEAU LOST, 14 August

  LOST, a GOLD LOCKET, heart-shape, 23 June

  FIVE POUNDS REWARD. – LOST, from the Paddington Terminus, 19 June

  E.P., who left Eastbourne by the 2 p.m., 14 August

  MISSING. – £10 REWARD. – LEFT SHEFFIELD, 18 August

  MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED, 9 November

  THE ONE OF THE VALLEY, 16 October

  Mrs T, see, for examples, adverts placed on 13 October 1871, 20 December 1872, 17 October 1873, 20 December 1873

  ‘W.’ writes that he wishes to see his friend at 96, 26 January

  TO C. – Do not fear, 19 May

  Have you forgotten me and the pretty gardens?, 12 October

  HENRY. – Nothing is known, 16 October

  BR. – Same address, 9 February

  Thorne North to Doncaster

  mess terrorist, Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014), 100

  Moscow to St Petersburg

  Am I myself, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Joel Carmichael (New York: Bantam Books, 1978), 106

  The railroad is to travel as a whore is to love, Tolstoy to Turgenev, 1857, see Moisei Altman, Chitaia Tolstogo (1966), 118, rep. in Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, Tolstoy on the Couch (London: Macmillan, 1998), 59

  good accustomed, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude (Ware: Wordsworth, 1999), 98

  loss of limbs, eyes, Instructions to Station Agents: Railway Passengers Assurance Company, 1897, 29 and Advert for the Railway Passengers Assurance Company https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/263447997237_/Vintage-1950s-Railway-Passengers-Assurance-Company-Ticket.jpg. I am grateful to Christopher Gray and David Turner for their help with this information, and to Dr Turner’s blog entry on railway insurance at http://turniprail.blogspot.com/2011/05/at-time-of-catastrophe-railway.html

  vibrations, see Charles Malchow, The Sexual Life: Embracing the Natural Sexual Impulse (St Louis: C. V. Mosby, 1915), 57

  Sheffield to Birmingham New Street

  forcing-house, E. M. Forster, Howards End (London: Random House, 1999), 191

  the secret of reading, George Measom, ‘Introduction’, The Official Illustrated Guide to the South-Eastern Railway, and Its Branches (London: Lowe and Brydon, 1858)

  Bologoye Station

  And when I say you, Rainald Goetz, Insane, tr. Adrian Nathan West (London: Fitzcarraldo, 2018), 22

>   Am I myself or someone else, Anna Karenina, tr. Joel Carmichael (New York: Bantam, 2006), 120

  tearing and whistling around the corner, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Bartlett, 102

  their steps crackling, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Garnett, 105

  quivering light flashing her eyes, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 79

  both frightened her and made her happy, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 101–2

  describe all the complexity of those feelings, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 147

  No single word in English, Vladimir Nabokov, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, by Alexander Pushkin, tr. Nabokov (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), 2, 141

  shrined in double retirement, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (London: Penguin, 1985), 39

  You are inside it; it is inside you, Georges Poulet, ‘The Phenomenology of Reading’, New Literary History, 1/1 (October 1969), 54

  a vast dying sea, Nicholson Baker, U & I (London: Granta, 1991), 32

  dreaming lettuce in the garden, see W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz (London: Penguin, 2011), 134

  Ghost Train

  pure love. None will do, Leo Tolstoy, diary entry for 10 March 1906 in the Jubilee Edition of Tolstoy’s Collected Works, 55: 374

  most observed of all observers, Whiting, 54

  The only one she adored, see Field’s diary entry ‘He was the only one whom I adored’, Whiting, 66

  so sad, so strange, so desolate. Where shall I find, see Whiting, 75, 59

  Your Father, Kate Field, Planchette’s Diary (New York: Redfield Press, 1868), 11

  They were all dying, Trollope, Autobiography, 28

  as he had lived, peaceably … death, Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (London: J. M. Dent, 1931), 5, 7

  fleetness of time, Kate Field, Diary 1 January 1869, quoted in Whiting, 196

  Losing a parent is not like having your house bombed, Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants (London: Penguin, 2014), 86

  Finchley Central to Burnt Oak

  Of course there is a little danger, Anthony Trollope, The American Senator, ed. John Halperin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 252

  a cascade of secondary losses, adapted from Kathryn H. Howell et al., ‘Children Facing Parental Cancer v. Parental Death’, JCFS, 25 (2016), 153

  life issues including depression, criminal or disruptive behaviours … self-concept and self-esteem and early sexual activity, Al Aynsley Green et al., ‘Bereavement in Childhood: Risks, Consequences and Responses’, BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care, 40 20.20 (2011), 1

  not-to-die-of-ignorance, see TBWA’s public information film, ‘AIDS: Don’t Die of Ignorance’ (1987)

  Chalk Farm to Belsize Park

  Then practice losing, Elizabeth Bishop, ‘One Art’, Complete Poems (London: Chatto & Windus, 1991), 178

  To suck out all the marrow of life, see Henry David Thoreau as quoted by Neil Perry in Tom Schulman’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

  athlete of the clock, John Updike, Marry Me (London: Penguin, 2008), 2. I was reminded of this passage from Updike, and alerted to its significance in relation to time and death by Katie Roiphe’s chapter on John Updike in her brilliant The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End (London: Virago, 2016). My discussion in this paragraph is indebted to her thinking.

  The art of losing, Elizabeth Bishop, ‘One Art’, Complete Poems (London: Chatto & Windus, 1991), 178

  Birmingham New Street to Leamington Spa

  ’cause we were never being boring, Pet Shop Boys, ‘Being Boring’, repr. in Neil Tennant, One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem (London: Faber, 2018), 11

  nursing, eating, drinking, Sofia Tolstoy, Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, 25 February 1865, tr. Porter, 24

  I wish something would happen soon, Sofia Tolstoy, Diaries, 3 November 1864, 23

  There is no such thing as love, Sofia Tolstoy, Diaries, 14 December 1890, 79

  I am a piece of household furniture, Sofia Tolstoy, Diaries, 13 November 1863, 20

  idiorhythmic, see Roland Barthes, How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 6 and passim

  Elephant and Castle

  Getting away with it, Electronic, ‘Getting Away With It’, Electronic, written by Johnny Marr, Bernard Sumner and Neil Tennant, produced by Bernard Sumner, Johnny Marr and Neil Tennant, performed by Electronic, Factory, 1989, Vinyl

  Paddington

  ‘It won’t do’, Henry James, The Golden Bowl, ed. Virginia Llewellyn Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 82

  Euston to Inverness

  Levin had been married three months, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 476

  delicious dream, adapted from Lydia Child, The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy (London: T.T. and J. Tegg, 1832), 124

  falling in love, Leo Tolstoy, ‘Family Happiness’ in The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 150

  difficult to imagine anything more unsympathetic, New York Times, 15 November 1874

  neither young nor handsome, quoted in Scharnhorst, 108

  racetrack but a sort of Peacock Alley, John Malcolm Brinnin, The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic (London: Macmillan, 1971), 240

  protesting stomachs … shivering timbers, Kate Field, ‘At Sea’ in Hap-Hazard (Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow & Co., 1873), 94

  excessively pretty – intelligent and piquante, Globe review, rep. in letter from Kate Field to Edmund Clarence Stedman, Letters, 1 May 1876, 123, 122

  Very delightful. Very difficult, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 476

  the real satisfactions of a woman’s life, Kate Field, diary entry, 20 January 1869, quoted in Whiting, 204

  I am misunderstood, Kate Field, diary entry, 18 January 1869, quoted in Whiting, 204

  Carnforth

  Just hang a light, ‘The Engineer’s Child’, also known as ‘The Red and the Green’ and ‘Just Set a Light’. First published as ‘Just Set a Light’ with words by Henry V. Neal and music by Gussie L. Davis, 1896 (New York: Howley, Haviland & Co, 1896). Since recorded by Hank Snow and Johnny Cash

  at her own pace, imperturbably, Barthes, How to Live Together, 9

  there will be dying, Derek Mahon, ‘Everything Is Going to Be All Right’, Collected Poems (Oldcastle: Galley Press, 1999), 38

  Tenway Junction

  It is a marvellous place, Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister, ed. Nicholas Shrimpton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 458

  Her little red handbag, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 757

  Where am I?, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Bartlett, 771

  Grand Central to Utah

  I only desire to be myself, Kate Field in the Boston Traveller, 28 September 1882, quoted in Scharnhorst, 249

  kindly … inimitable, ‘Anthony Trollope’, The Times, 7 December 1882, 6

  My marriage was like, Trollope, An Autobiography, 50

  It’s time, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Bartlett, 114

  loving husband, a loving father and a true friend, see Victoria Glendinning, Trollope (London: Hutchinson, 1992), 501

  the nature of a fit, New York Times, 6 November 1882

  except that the power of speech, The Times, 14 November 1882

  losing his strength, The Times, 2 December 1882

  critical, The Times, 5 December 1882

  an author at once so comfortable and so pleasant, New York Times, 7 December 1882

  I was adored once, too, Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II.3. 1. 179

  Trollope kills me, N. N. Glisev, Chronicle of the Life and Work of L. N. Tolstoy (Moscow, 1928), 315

  American woman, Trollope, An Autobiography, 195

  Mormon monster, see Whiting, 448

  Don’t talk to me about the equality of the sexes, Kate Field, Kate Field’s Washington, 11/11, 16 March 1895

&nbs
p; which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion, W. H. Auden, A Certain World: A Commonplace Book, rep. in Prose 1969–1973, ed. Edward Mendelson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 6, 189

  Kodak-distant, Philip Larkin, ‘Whatever Happened?’, Collected Poems, ed. Anthony Thwaite (London: Faber, 1988), 74

  All happy families resemble one another, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Nathan Dole (London, 1889), 1

  Leamington to Banbury

  Helpe me to seke, Thomas Wyatt, ‘Helpe me to seke’, Sir Thomas Wyatt: Poems, selected by Alice Oswald (London: Faber, 2008), xxiv

  By digging into our souls, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, tr. Maude, 144

  a loaded gun, Stacy Schiff, Véra: Mrs Vladimir Nabokov: A Biography (London: Random House, 1999), 197

  personal … public … consenting not to be a single being, ‘Interview with Maggie Nelson’, Atlas Review, https://www.theatlasreview.com/maggie-nelson/. I am indebted to Nelson’s brilliant discussion of the categories of personal and public in this interview. As she writes, ‘Honestly words like personal, private, intimate, don’t have an enormous amount of meaning to me right now … I’m into the complexities of the traffic between the individual and the group, into thinking about what Fred Moten means when he, after Glissant, talks about “consenting not to be a single being”. This conversation is far more intriguing and urgent to me than any rehashing of the binary of the private and the public (a conversation in which women and people of colour and transgender folk and so on don’t usually fare very well, as their bodies tend to disrupt/be excluded from a particular conceptualisation of the “public”, so the dice are loaded before the roll.’

  family idea, see Sofia Tolstoy, Diary, quoting Leo Tolstoy ‘For a work to be good, one has to love in it the main, fundamental idea. And so, in Anna Karenina, I love the family idea’, 3 March 1877, quoted in Liza Knapp, Anna Karenina and Others (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), 249; Leo Tolstoy, ‘Family Happiness’ in The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, 83

  not to get the central pair together, Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981), 2, 127

  Banbury

  have a ‘case’, Henry James, ‘Preface’, Wings of the Dove (London: Penguin, 2008), 7

  risk what I value, see Jeanette Winterson, Guardian, 2 October 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/02/gender.uk1

 

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