Word: lesbia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Husk & Fangs. The two novels on display, Love's Cross Currents and Lesbia Brandon, both deal with the frustrated yearning of a young man for a close relative-a girl cousin in one case, a sister in the other. Swinburne, who alone of all Victorian writers belonged to the top aristocracy, has no trouble handling those extra comic confusions that come naturally in a society where everybody seems to be related to everybody else. When he is being funny-for example, minutely recording the malicious troublemaking of an old gorgon ("all husk and fangs") named Lady Midhurst-Swinburne...
...Freudian critic, delights in. Swinburne, clearly, is the original of the repulsed lover in each book. The girl is his real-life cousin Mary Gordon, whose rejection of the poet was one of the turning points of Swinburne's stunted emotional life. More horrifying is the explanation (in Lesbia Brandon) of the poet's lifelong fondness for being whipped. With subtle, sensual elegance, Swinburne records the slow, tragic perversion of a boy whose admiration for his severe tutor and love for his sister can be most suitably and directly expressed by learning to bear a birching without crying...
...book is fragmentary, largely because Friend and Guardian Watts-Dunton stole the most purple chapters from Swinburne and would not give them back. Wilson laments the loss, through Victorian prudery, of a potential English prose master who might have done great things if encouraged. Bits of Lesbia Brandon justify his claim...