The passage below is not only a marvelous specimen of high camp, but a vigorous assault on sexual prudery.


Thomas Love Peacock
Crotchet Castle (1831)

Footnotes copyright 2008 by John Lauritsen


Excerpt from Chapter VII: “The Sleeping Venus”:

    There was an Italian painter, who obtained the name of Il Bragatore, [1] by the superinduction of inexpressibles [2] on the naked Apollos and Bacchuses of his betters. The fame of this worthy remained one and indivisible, till a set of heads, which had been, by a too common mistake of nature's journeymen, stuck upon magisterial shoulders, as the Corinthian capitals of ‘fair round bellies with fat capon lined’, but which nature herself had intended for the noddles of porcelain mandarins, promulgated simultaneously from the east and the west of London, an order that no plaster-of-Paris Venus should appear in the streets without petticoats. Mr Crotchet, on reading this order in the evening paper, which, by the postman's early arrival, was always laid on his breakfast-table, determined to fill his house with Venuses of all sizes and kinds. In pursuance of this resolution, came packages by water-carriage, containing an infinite variety of Venuses. There were the Medicean Venus, and the Bathing Venus; the Uranian Venus, and the Pandemian Venus; the Crouching Venus, and the Sleeping Venus; the Venus rising from the sea, the Venus with the apple of Paris, and the Venus with the armour of Mars. [3]
    The Reverend Doctor Folliott had been very much astonished at this unexpected display. Disposed, as he was, to hold, that whatever had been in Greece, was right; he was more than doubtful of the propriety of throwing open the classical adytum to the illiterate profane. [4 ] Whether, in his interior mind, he was at all influenced, either by the consideration that it would be for the credit of his cloth, with some of his vice-suppressing neighbours, to be able to say that he had expostulated; or by curiosity, to try what sort of defence his city-bred friend, who knew the classics only by translation, and whose reason was always a little ahead of his knowledge, would make for his somewhat ostentatious display of liberality in matters of taste; is a question, on which the learned may differ: but, after having duly deliberated on two full-sized casts of the Uranian and Pandemian Venus, in niches on each side of the chimney, and on three alabaster figures, in glass cases, on the mantelpiece, he proceeded, peirastically, [5] to open his fire. 


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
These little alabaster figures on the mantelpiece, Mr Crotchet, and those large figures in the niches — may I take the liberty to ask you what they are intended to represent?   


MR CROTCHET
Venus, sir; nothing more, sir; just Venus.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
May I ask you, sir, why they are there?   


MR CROTCHET
To be looked at, sir; just to be looked at: the reason for most things in a gentleman's house being in it at all; from the paper on the walls, and the drapery of the curtains even to the books in the library, of which the most essential part is the appearance of the back.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
Very true, sir. As great philosophers hold that the esse of things is percipi, so a gentleman's furniture exists to be looked at. [6] Nevertheless, sir, there are some things more fit to be looked at than others; for instance, there is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say, from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel the ennui, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an innocent and becoming spectacle. Touching this matter, there cannot, I think, be two opinions. But with respect to your Venuses there can be, and indeed there are, two very distinct opinions. Now, sir, that little figure in the centre of the mantelpiece, — as a grave paterfamilias, Mr Crotchet, with a fair nubile daughter, whose eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon, — I would ask you if you hold that figure to be altogether delicate? [7]


MR CROTCHET
The Sleeping Venus, sir? Nothing can be more delicate than the entire contour of the figure, the flow of the hair on the shoulders and neck, the form of the feet and fingers. It is altogether a most delicate morsel.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
Why, in that sense, perhaps, it is as delicate as whitebait in July. But the attitude, sir, the attitude.  


MR CROTCHET
Nothing can be more natural, sir.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
That is the very thing, sir. It is too natural: too natural, sir: it lies for all the world like — I make no doubt, the pious cheesemonger, who recently broke its plaster facsimile over the head of the itinerant vendor, was struck by a certain similitude to the position of his own sleeping beauty, and felt his noble wrath thereby justly aroused.  


MR CROTCHET
Very likely, sir. In my opinion, the cheesemonger was a fool, and the justice who sided with him was a greater.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
Fool, sir, is a harsh term: call not thy brother a fool.  


MR CROTCHET
Sir, neither the cheesemonger nor the justice is a brother of mine.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
Sir, we are all brethren.  


MR CROTCHET
Yes, sir, as the hangman is of the thief; the 'squire of the poacher; the judge of the libeller; the lawyer of his client; the statesman of his colleague; the bubble-blower of the bubble-buyer; the slave-driver of the negro: as these are brethren, so am I and the worthies in question.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
To be sure, sir, in these instances, and in many others, the term brother must be taken in its utmost latitude of interpretation: we are all brothers, nevertheless. But to return to the point. Now these two large figures, one with drapery on the lower half of the body, and the other with no drapery at all; upon my word, sir, it matters not what godfathers and godmothers may have promised and vowed for the children of this world, touching the devil and other things to be renounced, if such figures as those are to be put before their eyes.  


MR CROTCHET
Sir, the naked figure is the Pandemian Venus, and the half-draped figure is the Uranian Venus; and I say, sir, that figure realises the finest imaginings of Plato, and is the personification of the most refined and exalted feeling of which the human mind is susceptible; the love of pure ideal, intellectual beauty. [8]


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
I am aware, sir, that Plato, in his Symposium, discourseth very eloquently touching the Uranian and Pandemian Venus: but you must remember that, in our Universities Plato is held to be little better than a misleader of youth; and they have shown their contempt for him, not only by never reading him (a mode of contempt in which they deal very largely), but even by never printing a complete edition of him; although they have printed many ancient books which nobody suspects to have been ever read on the spot, except by a person attached to the press, who is therefore emphatically called ‘the reader’. [9]


MR CROTCHET
Well, sir?   


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
Why, sir, to ‘the reader’ aforesaid (supposing either of our Universities to have printed an edition of Plato), or to any one else who can be supposed to have read Plato, or indeed to be ever likely to do so, I would very willingly show these figures; because to such they would, I grant you, be the outward and visible signs of poetical and philosophical ideas: but, to the multitude, the gross carnal multitude, they are but two beautiful women, one half undressed, and the other quite so.  


MR CROTCHET
Then, sir, let the multitude look upon them and learn modesty.  


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
I must say that, if I wished my footman to learn modesty, I should not dream of sending him to school to a naked Venus.  


MR CROTCHET
Sir, ancient sculpture is the true school of modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had any thing that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant. And, sir, to show my contempt for cant in all its shapes, I have adorned my house with the Greek Venus, [10] in all her shapes, and am ready to fight her battle against all the societies that ever were instituted for the suppression of truth and beauty. [11]


THE REV DR FOLLIOTT
My dear sir, I am afraid you are growing warm. Pray be cool. Nothing contributes so much to good digestion as to be perfectly cool after dinner.




Notes

1. Communication from Giovanni Dall'Orto, a gay historian living in Milano: “Peacock is surely referring to Daniele da Volterra, nicknamed ‘il braghettone’ (the ‘inexpressibile’ painter) for having veiled private parts in Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Bragatore is NOT an Italian word.”

2. OED: Inexpressible——B. sb. 2. pl. (colloq.) Breeches or trousers. (Orig. euphemistic....)

3. In this passage Peacock identifies the Pandemian Venus with immodesty (“naked”) and the Uranian Venus with sexual modesty (“half-draped”). But Peacock, as an excellent classical scholar, knows there is more to it than this. In Plato's Dialogue on Love, The Banquet or Symposium, Pausanias postulates two gods of love: the Pandemian (Vulgar) Eros — son of the Pandemian Aphrodite (or Venus) — governs heterosexual or purely licentious relations, whereas the Uranian (Heavenly) Eros — son of the Uranian Aphrodite (or Venus) — governs principled male love. “This is that Love who attends on the Uranian deity, and is Uranian; the author of innumerable benefits both to the state and to individuals; and by the necessity of whose influence both the lover and the beloved are disciplined into the zeal of virtue.” (Shelley translation)
    Plato's Uranian Eros (or Love) by no means excludes sex between males; rather, he excludes relationships that are only licentious or promiscuous, as well as those that involve females.

4. “adytum”. the innermost sanctuary or shrine in ancient temples which was open only to priests and from which oracles were given : a private chamber : SANCTUM, HOLY OF HOLIES. [Webster's Third]

5. Peirastic. [Gk peirastikos, fr peiran to attempt] fitted for trial: experimental, tentative. (Webster's Third)

6. “Esse est percipi” (to be is to be perceived) is a dictum of George Berkeley (Bishop Berkeley, 1685-1753), an extremely idealist philosopher.

7. “Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fish pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim; thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.” (Song of Songs 7:4)

8. Later in the 19th century “Uranian” became a favored word of gay men in England. (Timothy d'Arch Smith, Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English ‘Uranian’ Poets from 1889 to 1930, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1970.) The 19th century Uranians, as well as Plato, understood that Uranian Love did include sex.

9. During Peacock's lifetime, the only English translations of Plato's Symposium were bowdlerized. In order to conceal male love, the central theme of the dialogue, the translators reversed the genders, turning “him” into “her”, and so on. Shelley's translation, which was known to Peacock, would have been the first in English to present the genders correctly; it was done in 1818 but only published complete and unbowdlerized over a century later — by Roger Ingpen in 1931.
    Shelley's translation of The Banquet (his title for Symposium), together with his introductory essay, “A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient [sic] Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love”, is currently available in a Pagan Press edition (2001). To read descriptions and reviews of it click here.

10. Greek love (Greek Venus) — from Classical Antiquity to the present — means love between males, all-male sexuality. For example, The Greeks and Greek Love (2007) is the title of a book by James Davidson; its meaning is immediately understood.

11. A witty and powerful attack on sexual hypocrisy and Judeo-Christian sexual morality. It is not coincidental that Mr. Crochet's antagonist is a clergyman.




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