Houyhnhnm Land

So up, and to the Office till noon, and then home to a little dinner, and thither again till night, mighty busy, to my great content, doing a great deal of business, and so home to supper, and to bed; I finding this day that I may be able to do a great deal of business by dictating, if I do not read myself, or write, without spoiling my eyes, I being very well in my eyes after a great day's work.

• Jane Harris, Gillespie and I: A Novel (Harper, 2012).  Woman reminisces about her experiences with an (ultimately unsuccessful) artist and his family in late-Victorian Scotland.  (Lift Bridge)
• Richard Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650-1950 (Cambridge, 2009).  The late Maxwell's attempt to produce an alternative genealogy of the historical novel's emergence; I posted about  it a couple of years ago.  (Now would be a good time to thank CUP for having a "hardbacks for $20" sale.)  (CUP)
• Heidi Kaufman, English Origins, Jewish Discourse, and the Nineteenth-Century British Novel: Reflections on a Nested Nation (Penn, 2009).  Analyzes how British fiction approriates narratives and concepts from Judaism in order to think about the nature of Englishness; discusses both obvious novels (Tancred) and not-so-obvious novels (Middlemarch).  (Amazon [secondhand])

In the stories we tell about teaching and research, we generally cast teaching as the beneficiary of burning  the midnight oil over, say, obscure Reformation polemics or the works of the Bollandists.  Scholarship keeps us attuned to "what's going on," keeps us energized, keeps us from eternally lecturing from the proverbial yellowed sheet of paper.  (Whether, in this age of iPads, anyone lectures from yellowed sheets of paper is, of course, open to question.)  And scholarship does do these things, even if the scholar in question never teaches the subject of his or her own research.  (Bad religious poetry from The Protestant Magazine? Probably not going to be attractive to undergrads.)  My work on anti-Catholicism, for example, is proving awfully handy in the Gothic course; I gave a down-and-dirty brief lecture on anti-Catholic tropes just this week, as it happens.

But we rarely talk about how teaching provokes or affects our research.  This evening, while prepping tomorrow's class on Horace Walpole's The Mysterious Mother, I suddenly found myself working out how to talk about the White Lady of Avenel as a non-problem in Walter Scott's The Monastery and The Abbot duology.    (Why she's usually treated as a problem: supernatural figure wandering about loose in the otherwise realist first novel, who then gets the delete-key treatment in the second. See also the history of critical unhappiness with The Bride of Lammermoor.)  Or, more directly, an article I have coming out in just a few weeks emerged from a "wait, haven't I seen this before?" moment while rereading Vanity Fair for a seminar.  Both instances, you'll note, were very spur-of-the-moment, very unexpected--something that's also important for scholarship.  How can we ever know what will help us to learn some new thing or break through some old mental block?     

Up, and to the office, where all the morning, and home to dinner at noon, where I find Mr. Sheres; and there made a short dinner, and carried him with us to the King's playhouse, where "The Heyresse," not- withstanding Kinaston's being beaten, is acted; and they say the King is very angry with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But his part is done by Beeston, who is fain to read it out of a book all the while, and thereby spoils the part, and almost the play, it being one of the best parts in it; and though the design is, in the first conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play, wrote, they say, by my Lord Newcastle. But it was pleasant to see Beeston come in with others, supposing it to be dark, and yet he is forced to read his part by the light of the candles: and this I observing to a gentleman that sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith, and spread it up and down. But that, that pleased me most in the play is, the first song that Knepp sings, she singing three or four; and, indeed, it was very finely sung, so as to make the whole house clap her. Thence carried Sheres to White Hall, and there I stepped in, and looked out Mr. May, who tells me that he and his company cannot come to dine with me to- morrow, whom I expected only to come to see the manner of our Office and books, at which I was not very much displeased, having much business at the Office, and so away home, and there to the office about my letters, and then home to supper and to bed, my wife being in mighty ill humour all night, and in the morning I found it to be from her observing Knepp to wink and smile on me; and she says I smiled on her; and, poor wretch! I did perceive that she did, and do on all such occasions, mind my eyes. I did, with much difficulty, pacify her, and were friends, she desiring that hereafter, at that house, we might always sit either above in a box, or, if there be [no] room, close up to the lower boxes.

This month is crunch time for the final revisions to Book Two, which is why I'm not talking about offbeat Victorian religious fiction very much--I'm writing about it!   However, I'm also not shelving.   Things are not looking pretty:

The situation is just as bad in the main library.  As the books are usually the only things I manage to keep truly organized, I fear matters are getting into a perilous state. 

Up, and by water from the Tower to White Hall, the first time that I have gone to that end of the town by water, for two or three months, I think, since I kept a coach, which God send propitious to me; but it is a very great convenience. I went to a Committee of Tangier, but it did not meet, and so I meeting Mr. Povy, he and I away to Dancre's, to speak something touching the pictures I am getting him to make for me. And thence he carried me to Mr. Streeter's, the famous history-painter over the way, whom I have often heard of, but did never see him before; and there I found him, and Dr. Wren, and several Virtuosos, looking upon the paintings which he is making for the new Theatre at Oxford: and, indeed, they look as if they would be very fine, and the rest think better than those of Rubens in the Banqueting-house at White Hall, but I do not so fully think so. But they will certainly be very noble; and I am mightily pleased to have the fortune to see this man and his work, which is very famous; and he a very civil little man, and lame, but lives very handsomely. So thence to my Lord Bellassis, and met him within: my business only to see a chimney-piece of Dancre's doing, in distemper, with egg to keep off the glaring of the light, which I must have done for my room: and indeed it is pretty, but, I must confess, I do think it is not altogether so beautiful as the oyle pictures; but I will have some of one, and some of another. Thence set him down at Little Turnstile, and so I home, and there eat a little dinner, and away with my wife by coach to the King's playhouse, thinking to have seen "The Heyresse," first acted on Saturday last; but when we come thither, we find no play there; Kinaston, that did act a part therein, in abuse to Sir Charles Sedley, being last night exceedingly beaten with sticks, by two or three that assaulted him, so as he is mightily bruised, and forced to keep his bed. So we to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw "She Would if She Could," and so home and to my office to business, and then to supper and to bed. This day, going to the play, The. Turner met us, and carried us to her mother, at my Lady Mordaunt's; and I did carry both mother and daughter with us to the Duke of York's playhouse, at next door.