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Women Writing the
Neo-Victorian Novel
Erotic “Victorians”
Kathleen Renk
Women Writing the Neo-Victorian Novel
 Kathleen Renk

Women Writing
the Neo-Victorian
Novel
Erotic “Victorians”
Kathleen Renk
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-48286-2    ISBN 978-3-030-48287-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48287-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my daughter Sarah Elizabeth and my granddaughters Isabella
Ann, Carrigan Clare, Piper Elizabeth, and Maeve Dinah,
with the hope that they will achieve all of their dreams and that
a feminist utopia will be attained in their lifetimes
 Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Department of English at Northern Illinois University,

where I designed and taught a graduate seminar entitled “‘Erotic’
Victorians: Sex and Sexuality in Neo-Victorian Fiction” in the spring of
2013. The seminar piqued my interest in Neo-Victorian novels by women
and their approach to the erotic.
I would like to thank Allie Troyanos and Rachel Jacobe at Palgrave
Macmillan as well as the anonymous readers of the original manuscript
whose insights and suggestions improved the manuscript.
In addition, I wish to thank and acknowledge the Tate Museum in
London for permission to use Anna Lea Merritt’s painting Love Locked
Out. I wish to specifically thank the Tate Museum’s David Thompson
who was a pleasure to work with. Finally, I’m grateful for the help and
permission that I received from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to
reproduce four of Julia Margaret Cameron’s photographs: “Annie,”
“Sappho,” “Spring,” and “Grace Thro’ Love.” I wish to acknowledge that
a section of the introduction is based on my article, “Erotic Possession,
the ‘Phantasm,’ and Platonic Love in Two Neo-Victorian Novels.”
Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 56 (2015): 576–585.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction: “Erotic ‘Victorians’: Women, Neo-Victorian

Fiction, and Creative Eros”  1
The Novel “Reforming” Woman’s World   5
Eros, the “Phantasm,” and Platonic Love in Byatt’s Possession   6
Creative Eros  15

2 “The Female Artist’s Erotic Gaze in Neo-­Victorian Fiction” 23

The Gaze  25
Victorian Photography  27
Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists and Julia Margaret Cameron  29
Afterimage: Re-imagining the Pre-Raphaelite Vision  35
“Breaking the Sequence; Breaking the Sentence”: Re-envisioning
Ophelia and Seizing Sappho  38
Visionary Luminescence in Sixty Lights  42

3 Eros and the Woman Writer: Conversing with the Spirits of

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Charlotte Brontë, and E. Nesbit 53
Aurora Leigh and the “Woman Question”  55
Marriage, Mothering, Writing, and Overcoming Male Influence  58
The Monstrous Feminine  72
Sexual Eros and Creativity  77
The Lesbian continuum  82

ix
x Contents

4 Female Rogues and Gender Outlaws in the Neo-Victorian

Novel 91
Slammerkin: Fashioning the Self  92
Alias Grace: Mary Whitney the Rogue 102
Fingersmith and Roguish Freedom 109
Gender Outlaws: Tipping the Velvet and Frog Music 115

5 “In Other Dark Rooms: Eros and the Woman Spiritualist”129

Affinity and Confinement 131
Two Versions of the Spiritualist Medium Florence Cook 136
Selene of the Spirits: Hearing Spirit Voices 137
Roberts’s In the Red Kitchen 142
“The Conjugial Angel” 145

6 “Voyages Out: Postcolonial Desires and the Female

Victorian Traveler/Adventurer”153
Voyaging Out: Women and Travel 154
Egyptian Sojourners: Lady Lucie Duff Gordon and the Victorian
Artist John Frederick Lewis 157
“Going Native” in The Mistress of Nothing 160
Sartorial Choices, Cross-Dressing, and Identity in
The Map of Love 163
A Female World of Habitation: The Harem 165
A New World of Habitation in The Mistress of Nothing 169

7 Conclusion: Drawing a New Map of Love177

Bibliography179

Index193
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Love Locked Out, 1890, Anna Lea Merritt (1844–1930), Tate
Gallery, London. (Photo ©Tate) 24
Fig. 2.2 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Julia Margaret
Cameron, “Annie,” 1864, Albumen Silver print, 21.1 × 16.2 cm 32
Fig. 2.3 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Julia Margaret
Cameron, “Sappho,” 1865, Albumen Silver print,
22.1 × 17.6 cm 33
Fig. 2.4 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Julia Margaret
Cameron, “Spring,” 1865 34
Fig. 2.5 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Julia Margaret
Cameron, “Grace Thro’ Love,” 1865, Albumen Silver print,
24.8 × 19.5 cm42

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: “Erotic ‘Victorians’: Women,

Neo-Victorian Fiction, and Creative Eros”

In the conclusion of Sarah Waters’s neo-Victorian novel Fingersmith,

Maud, a young woman exploited by her uncle to transcribe Victorian por-
nography, announces to her love Sue her plan to write erotic fiction in her
own way, suggesting that a Victorian woman might recreate and redefine
the erotic. Intriguingly, in his The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality
and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth Century England, Steven Marcus
suggests that, in contrast to Victorian male writers of pornography, women
who wrote erotic literature did so differently. Instead of writing about
male genital organs conquering supine females, these women writers
wrote about relationships, “emotions…, contemplation, [and] conscious
reverie” (281). While it seems unlikely that such a writerly act like Maud’s
would frequently occur in the Victorian era, I find that contemporary
women writers of the neo-Victorian novel, like these female Victorian
counterparts, do redefine the erotic but in a distinctive way.1 In their re-­
envisioning of the Victorian novel, these women writers draw on various
conceptions of the erotic from classical to contemporary, but, in addition,
they gravitate toward the way Audre Lorde defines the erotic as “the life-
force of women, [it is] creative energy empowered” (Lorde 55).
Lorde argues that:

[t]he erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It
has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and plasticized
sensation. For this reason, we have turned away from the exploration and

© The Author(s) 2020 1

K. Renk, Women Writing the Neo-Victorian Novel,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48287-9_1
2 K. RENK

consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing

it with the pornographic. (55)

This definition, which distinguishes the erotic from pornography, speaks

not only to the exercise of sensuality but also to an attempt to empower
women to awaken their creative potential and to realize themselves as full
and complete human beings.
This interdisciplinary study focuses on the work of contemporary
British, Irish, and Commonwealth women writers, such as A.S. Byatt,
Emma Donoghue, Sarah Waters, Helen Humphreys, Margaret Atwood,
and Ahdaf Soueif, among others, and their attempts to re-envision the
erotic in neo-Victorian fiction. As we will see, in the classical sense, eros is
defined as “destructive and acquisitive,” the desire and “will to possess”
the beautiful (Soble xiii, Plato 43). I argue that women writing neo-­
Victorian fiction included in this study utilize classical concepts of eros but
also highlight Lorde’s notion of creative eros. These writers invent female
characters who demonstrate a “will to possess” themselves and thereby
embolden and energize themselves as artists, writers, rogues/gender out-
laws, spiritualists, and travelers/adventurers.2 As such, they defy what
A.S. Byatt terms the “willed oblivion” of women in fiction (Byatt 1994,
120). They possess sexual and creative subjectivity.3 These female charac-
ters also embody the efforts of early feminists, not those who organized
collectively, but those who individually defied social expectations, resisted
patriarchy, and “self-authorized” in order to create “authentic selves”
(Lerner 47). In doing so, these women writers pick up where Victorian
women writers left off, as they ask and reformulate answers to the Victorian
“Woman Question.”
Numerous scholarly studies have analyzed the phenomenon of neo-­
Victorian fiction, including such works as Louisa Hadley’s Neo-Victorian
Fiction and Historical Narrative: The Victorians and Us (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Simon Joyce’s The Victorians in the Rearview
Mirror (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2007), Cora Kaplan’s Victoriana.
Histories, Fictions, Criticism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2007),
Kate Mitchell’s History and Cultural Memory in neo-Victorian Fiction:
Victorian Afterimages (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010),
John Kucich and Dianne Sadoff’s edited collection, Victorian Afterlife:
Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century (Minneapolis: Univ.
Minnesota Press, 2000), and Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn’s Neo-­
Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999–2009 (New
 1 INTRODUCTION: “EROTIC ‘VICTORIANS’: WOMEN, NEO-VICTORIAN… 3

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). In general, these studies have focused

on narratology, the relationship between our era and the Victorian era,
theories in regard to why the Victorian era is of interest to contemporary
writers, and the ways in which the Victorian era is imagined.
Clearly, based on the high-level of scholarly interest, the neo-Victorian
novel has obviously fascinated readers and scholars ever since the first neo-­
Victorian novels were written as either prequels to Victorian fiction, such
as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), or postmodern renditions of the
Victorian novel, such as John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(1969). Since the late 1960s and especially in the 1980s and 1990s, the
neo-Victorian novel proliferated as writers sought to re-create/reform and
or “replicate” the Victorian era.4 Various theories abound in regard to the
neo-Victorian phenomenon, including regressive theories based on
Margaret Thatcher’s ahistorical nostalgia for a supposed ideal Victorian
past (Hadley 2010, 10), but also progressive ideas based on the ways in
which the neo-Victorian novel often “challenges or critiques official histo-
riographies [of the Victorian era]” (Mitchell 2010, 6). Often, these cri-
tiques present the reader with “different” versions of the Victorian world
by “represent[ing] marginalized voices, new histories of sexuality, [and]
post-colonial viewpoints” (Heilmann and Llewellyn 165). As such, accord-
ing to Mark Llewellyn, the neo-Victorian novel contains a “democratizing
impulse” (167). Kate Mitchell agrees in noting that the neo-Victorian
novel “moved away from high culture and included features previously
invisible or excluded: women, the working and criminal classes and non-­
Europeans” (2010, 165).5 Overall, neo-Victorian novels connect with the
Victorian era by “self-consciously engag[ing] with” the Victorian era
through a deliberate “act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery, and (re)
vision” (Heilmann and Llewellyn 4).
This engagement with the Victorian as an act of re-vision often takes
the form of addressing the ways in which gender and sexuality are con-
structed in the Victorian era.6 And while Jeannette King in The Victorian
Woman Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction asks “[w]hy, in the last
decades of the twentieth century, should so many women novelists have
looked back a hundred years for the subject of their fiction? What is the
interest of Victorian constructions of gender and sexuality for modern
feminists?” (1), no study of the neo-Victorian novel has specifically focused
on women writers nor on the ways in which the erotic is conceived in
women’s neo-Victorian fiction, and how this re-conception relates to the
interests of contemporary feminism.
4 K. RENK

As such, this book addresses the following questions: Why are women
writers drawn to the neo-Victorian genre and what does this reveal about
the state of contemporary feminism? As readers, are we attracted to this
fiction merely because of our so-called prurient interests and our own era’s
pre-occupation with sexuality and sexual liberation? How do classical and
contemporary forms of the erotic play into the ways in which women writ-
ers address and answer the Victorian “woman question”? How exactly is
the erotic used to underscore women’s creative potential? How and to
what extent do these women writers write back/“talk back”7 to their
Victorian counterparts, such as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and
Elizabeth Barrett Browning? How do these women writers conceive “new
worlds of habitation” (a term used by Annis Pratt) for Victorian women
where the creative erotic can be expressed?
Before considering how neo-Victorian women writers approach the
novel and utilize classical and contemporary forms of eros, I’d like to clar-
ify the approach to feminism that I take in this study. I agree with Judith
Keegan Gardiner that feminism is best defined as “a utopian discourse of
an ideal future, never yet attained” (2002, 10) and that “Neo-Victorianism
and feminism … have always been related endeavors” (MacDonald and
Goggin 1), particularly for women writers who still seek this unattained
ideal. Yet in writing about women’s sexual and creative eros (what could
be called sexual and creative subjectivity) in the Victorian era, these writers
underscore the hidden histories of ordinary women, female “geniuses,”8
who sought to create themselves as artists, writers, rogues/gender out-
laws, spiritualists, and travelers/adventurers, as well as to realize them-
selves as sexual subjects, not sexual objects.
With that said, I take a broad, transhistorical postfeminist approach that
accounts for the multiple and varied debates about feminism since its
inception (not just since the second wave, as argued by Stéphanie Genz
and Benjamin Brabbon in Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories
(2009, 22)). Although postfeminism is a conflicted, somewhat contested
term,9 I use it in a distinctive way, similar to how postcolonialism is some-
times defined. Akin to one definition of postcolonialism that defines post-
colonialism as everything that comes after the moment of contact with the
colonizers (Ashcroft et al. 1), postfeminism, in my view, can be defined as
all feminist approaches and practices that came after the first feminist writ-
ings and actions; thus postfeminism encapsulates all feminist theories and
practices from the first-wave through current theories and practices.10
Viewed in this way, postfeminism suggests that feminism is still necessary
 1 INTRODUCTION: “EROTIC ‘VICTORIANS’: WOMEN, NEO-VICTORIAN… 5

and also suggests that feminism, which contains many intellectual, social,
and political threads, has not yet fully achieved all of its ends; the ideal of
feminism, the utopian dream, has not yet been attained. In this way, in an
era that asked the “Victorian Woman Question” about woman’s place and
her rightful social and political roles, the struggles of Victorian women to
create themselves are still relevant to many women in our current world.
In a sense, the Victorians are still “us,” despite the social and political gains
that women have achieved. Many women around the world have not yet
attained those fundamental rights, nor the right to act as sexual subjects,
not objects, nor the right to fully realize their creativity. The neo-Victorian
novel in women’s hands sets out to reform the world through advancing
the utopian ideal where all women can attain and exercise sexual and cre-
ative subjectivity/eros.

The Novel “Reforming” Woman’s World

In A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Randolph Ash argues that while poets “write for
the life of the language,” novelists “write for the betterment of the world”
(147). This “betterment” or reformation of the world seems to be an
impetus for neo-Victorian women writers who answer the Victorian
“Woman Question” differently than Victorian women writers did. Whereas
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre cannot express sexual desire and chafes at
her circumscribed role, desiring a broad sphere of activity, A.S. Byatt’s
Olive Wellwood openly rebels against women’s limited roles and engages
with the idea that the erotic is a “source of [sexual and creative] power.”
Overall, neo-Victorian women writers further interrogate the issue of
women’s supposed place in Victorian society, a place deemed to be the
private sphere. In doing so, neo-Victorian women writers represented in
this study endeavor to make Victorian women’s creative lives visible and
thus attempt to reform woman’s world. They address the fact that andro-
centric history, which is “gender-skewed,” renders ordinary women invis-
ible, with the exception of women deemed great or powerful, such as
queens and militants, who are known for supposedly “heroic” deeds.11
Ordinary women or women attempting to enter the arts and the profes-
sions or who enter the public realm (not the political public) are not
included in such histories (Gallagher, Lubelska, and Ryan 2). In many
ways, these women writers act as feminist historians who “take on the task
of salvaging, critiquing and rewriting stories of past women’s lives and
experiences” (Gallagher et al. 2).
6 K. RENK

Heilmann and Llewellyn also speak to this issue of women writers

rewriting history to include commonplace women’s lives and experiences.
They view women writers of historical fiction as women who “redress the
past—a female past either outside of or silent within the male tradition”
(2004, 142). In addition, they note that Byatt believes that women write
about history because they have been forbidden to “think about it” (137).
Diana Wallace in her The Women’s Historical Novel: 1900–2000 (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005) agrees with this notion that women writing the histori-
cal novel use “the historical setting … as a way of writing about subjects
which would otherwise be taboo” (2). The sense of the forbidden or
taboo works in two ways though in terms of neo-Victorian works by
women writers. First, since women were generally excluded from andro-
centric history, we have been forbidden to “enter” history and thus con-
temporary women writers do transgress the forbidden and enter history.
Second, neo-Victorian works in general address other “forbidden histo-
ries,” including the history of sexuality and eros, topics that in general
appear taboo at least on the surface in Victorian discourse because of its
sense of what could be named in terms of sex and sexuality.12 It is this
combination of the forbidden, women’s forbidden history, and the forbid-
den history of sexuality and eros that these women writers appear to
redress. They address the linkages between women’s history, women’s
lives, and the exercise of sexuality and creative eros. While underscoring
relationships and emotions, as did Victorian women writers of the erotic,
they also, unlike some male writers of the genre, do not depict graphic
sexual scenes. They do not write to titillate the reader, but rather use the
erotic to further contemplate gender roles, sexual behaviors, and identi-
ties. And, in some cases, as Byatt does in Possession, they acknowledge the
dangers of eros, in the classical sense.
Before I outline the major theses in regard to the use of creative eros, I
consider the ways in which Byatt’s Possession withholds explicit sexual
scenes, a strategy that the other works in this study generally employ.

Eros, the “Phantasm,” and Platonic Love in Byatt’s

Possession
In Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism, Cora Kaplan implies that we
are fascinated, in part, by the neo-Victorian novel because neo-Victorian
fiction, at times, offers what is not present in Victorian fiction; in our
 1 INTRODUCTION: “EROTIC ‘VICTORIANS’: WOMEN, NEO-VICTORIAN… 7

sexually liberated era; this fiction elicits and satisfies our “prurient” desires
(86). This suggests that the neo-Victorian novel offers readers a “peep”
show into the erotic lives of the Victorians. The novel becomes a lens
through which we observe what was not graphically represented in
Victorian fiction. While it is true that erotic sexuality is sometimes more
graphically described in neo-Victorian fiction by some writers, for example
in Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, than it is in Victorian
fiction,13 Byatt’s Possession, despite the fact that it is written in a Post-­
Freudian, Post-Kinsey era, is more philosophical in its approach to repre-
senting the erotic and draws more heavily on Victorian mores that would
prohibit the blatant depiction of sexual acts, therefore it leaves more to the
reader’s imagination. Here, I use the Greek concept of eros, as well as
Medieval and Renaissance notions of sexual possession by the “phantasm,”
to consider the ways in which the erotic is represented in Possession. I argue
that Byatt grounds the erotic in mythic material and suggests that erotic
love may be perilous because it is “egotistical and acquisitive” and can lead
to madness in the lover. In addition, Byatt also portrays the original idea
of Platonic love, which philosopher Gregory Vlastos defines as a “mix of
sensuality, sentiment, and intellect, a companionship [shared by a same-­
sex couple] bound by erotic attraction no less than by intellectual give and
take”(125),14 as a possible cure for this destructive love.15
In “Sexsation and the Neo-Victorian Novel: Orientalising the
Nineteenth Century in Contemporary Fiction,” Marie-Luise Kohlke
repines that in Possession “[there is] a long drawn out build-up of attrac-
tion and seduction. When the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and
Christabel LaMotte finally consummate their secret love affair, their
orgasms disappear into a line break in the text; the reader’s curiosity
remains unsatisfied” (63). The logic is odd here in that Kohlke wants the
reader to “vicariously experience” (63) Victorian sexual fulfillment and
concurrently she scolds contemporary writers for their projection of our
sexual license onto the Victorian era. Overall, she decries the use of the
erotic in neo-Victorian fiction, claiming that such writing, which often
seeks to replicate the Victorian novel, ends up “orientalising” the nine-
teenth century, making it the location and timeframe onto which we proj-
ect our own sexual desires. At the same time, she criticizes Byatt for not
going “all the way” and giving the reader detailed descriptions of sexual
scenes. Kohlke critiques Byatt’s diction in these sex scenes, arguing that
the language “withholds more than it discloses” (63).16 Kohlke, as a
reader, feels frustrated, because of the “highly romanticized” [not sexually
8 K. RENK

explicit] diction. Oddly, while Kohlke’s assertion about the ways in which
we project our own sexual desires onto neo-Victorian fiction is partially
correct in that we, as readers, likely think that Victorians were sexual prigs,
while we, in our era, are generally not,17 she overlooks one of the objec-
tives of some neo-Victorian fiction, in particular novels written by women.
In mimicking the style and substance of Victorian fiction, Byatt and other
women writers of neo-Victorian fiction will not wholly break with Victorian
conventions in regard to what can be penned about sexual acts. Instead,
Byatt “withhold[s] explicit language” and leaves much to the reader’s
imagination as she ponders philosophical aspects of eros.
In order to address how Byatt represents sexual eros, it is important to
consider Greek definitions of the term as well as conceptions of the god.
According to Bruce Thornton, the god Eros, (in the Roman pantheon,
Cupid), is drastically different from our contemporary notion of love; he
is the antithesis of the “hallmark” Cupid who benignly shoots his arrows
and unites us in love to one another. Instead, Eros is “much more sinis-
ter … [he] is a force of nature, a window into the irrational where swarm
myriad other desires whose excess leads to our destruction” (14).18 The
concept of eros for the Greeks, like the god himself, connotes damage and
chaos, which can “overthrow … the mind and orders of civilization” (12).
Plato complicates this concept and the god through the tale that Socrates
conveys in The Symposium that he heard from his “instructress in the art of
love,” Diotima of Mantinea who relates that:

Following the birth of Aphrodite, the other gods were having a feast, includ-
ing Resource [sometimes translated Plenty], the son of Invention. When
they’d had dinner, Poverty came to beg, as people do at feasts, and so she
was by the gate. Resource was drunk with nectar (this was before wine was
discovered), went into the garden of Zeus, and fell into a drunken sleep.
Poverty formed the plan of relieving her lack of resources by having a child
by Resource; she slept with him and became pregnant with Love [or Eros].
(Plato 39)

This offspring of the oppositions, Resource and Poverty, is “always

poor … [has no] shoes or home. … [H]e always lives in a state of need …
he schemes to get hold of beautiful and good things” (Plato 39). Socrates
also asserts that “far from being sensitive and beautiful, as is commonly
supposed, he’s tough, with hardened skin … [he is] impetuous and
intense” and a “lifelong lover of wisdom” (Plato 40). Even though this
 1 INTRODUCTION: “EROTIC ‘VICTORIANS’: WOMEN, NEO-VICTORIAN… 9

apotheosis of love is a penniless enchanter, the product of poverty com-

bined with plenty, who assails the good through his erratic, malignant
nature, Plato, through Socrates’s tale, views Eros as one rung on the lad-
der of love that leads to higher forms of love. Even so, according to phi-
losopher Alan Soble, the Greek concept of eros, in general, is an
“acquisitive, egocentric or even selfish” love that is “unconstant [and]
wavering” (1989, xxiii), essentially a form of love that seeks to possess
forever the beautiful, equated with the good (Plato 43).19
It is essential to consider how the erotic is treated in Victorian fiction
before we look at its representation in Byatt’s novel. David Trotter main-
tains that the erotic could not be directly represented in Victorian fiction,
particularly in domestic realism. Although he does not speak about the
entire body of Victorian fiction, which varies in its attention to representa-
tions of sexual behavior,20 he persuasively argues his point in relation to
the classic realist novel, Middlemarch, which can be viewed as a model for
other domestic fictions, including some neo-Victorian ones. He asserts
that George Eliot did not include erotic suggestions or scenes in
Middlemarch because of her “moral consciousness.” This moral con-
sciousness was not based on sexual prudery, however, but rather the fact
that Eliot believed “there [must be] a complete submergence of egoistic
[read erotic] desire and an habitual outrush of emotional force in sympa-
thetic channels” (44).21 For Eliot, the erotic is only represented “in mem-
ory and speculation, in half-told stories, such as that of Will’s grandmother,
Julia, and in evocation of other literary texts, such as Shakespeare’s son-
nets” (Siegel qtd. in Trotter 43). According to Carol Siegel, “[t]here is an
awareness of the erotic in [the Victorian novel], but it comes from the
places where the erotic inheres … in memory” (Siegel qtd. in Trotter 43).
It is this suppression of egoistic love that is highlighted in Byatt’s novel.
In Possession, Ellen Ash’s observations about Christabel LaMotte’s
“The Fairy Melusine” Proem reflect generalized Victorian attitudes about
the erotic in literature. When pondering the scene in the poem where “the
husband … bores his peephole and observes his Siren-spouse at play in her
vat of waters,” an act that Melusina forbids, Ellen relates that this “scene
was best left to the imagination.”22 And, in the text, this is precisely what
Byatt does. Although Ellen considers the scene too “strong for some stom-
achs, especially maidenly English ones” (135), Byatt does not explicitly
depict this erotic and transgressive scene where the knight Raimondin
peeps at his wife and discerns her true nature as a serpent woman who
possesses a strong, lashing, phallic tail, a scene conveyed in the medieval
10 K. RENK

legends about the White Lady, Melusina. Instead of tempting the reader
with an explicit description of this somewhat sexualized scene whereby
Melusina is rendered, in part, masculine and perhaps “self-contained” in
her mythic world, as Laura Van Dyke argues, Byatt entices the reader by
suggesting the erotic through implicit language in the manner of Victorian
writers. She uses the mythic archetype of Melusina and the other Dames
Blanches, who are destined to be “fantastic” soulless creatures until and
unless they marry a human male (189). Byatt presents the force of the
myth through Ellen Ash’s words as she describes Melusina’s “terrible and
tragic” tail. A “monster” tail, in LaMotte’s version of the Melusina myth,
that “[b]eat[s] the lambent bath to diamond-fine/Refracting lines of
spray, a dancing veil/Of heavier water on the breathless air” (135).
Melusina is not eroticized as a centerfold pin-up but rather as a powerful,
alluring, and dangerous mythic force, much like the Greek version of eros,
that, according to Thornton, was sometimes represented as a “coiling”
snake (16) or flying serpent as in the myth of Eros and Psyche, which
Byatt alludes to in her novella, “Morpho Eugenia.”23 Here the erotic is
conceived as a “source of power,” as Lorde forcefully argues.
Further, in the erotic scene that satisfies Christabel and Ash’s desire,
Byatt uses mythic material to accentuate the protean nature of the sexual-
ized female, who becomes a sexual subject, not a sexual object. When Ash
assumes that Christabel is a sexual innocent, Byatt makes Christabel the
character who asks Ash, “Are you afraid?” to which he responds, “Not in
the least, now … My selkie, my white lady, Christabel” (308). And during
the following nights when Ash and Christabel make love, Ash thinks, “It
was like holding Proteus … as though she was liquid moving through his
grasping fingers, as though she was waves of the sea rising all around him”
(308). Such mythic material is suggestive but not graphic and is more in
keeping with Victorian conventions about the depiction of sexual activity
in the novel.24
Beyond this effort to leave more to the reader’s imagination, Byatt also
underscores the dangers of erotic, acquisitive love, a type of love that over-
takes the lover and makes her or him nearly mad because of the longing to
possess forever the beautiful beloved. In warning of these dangers, Byatt
suggests Medieval and Renaissance notions of the “phantasm.” In the
twelfth century, Andreas Capellanus described erotic love in this way:

When a man sees a woman deserving of erotic attentions, he at once begins

to desire her with his whole heart. Then the more he thinks of it, the more
 1 INTRODUCTION: “EROTIC ‘VICTORIANS’: WOMEN, NEO-VICTORIAN… 11

he feels himself imbued with love until he reconstructs her in her entirety in
phantasy. Then he begins to think of her figure, he perceives her limbs,
imagines tham (sic) in action and explores [rimari, lit: splits] the private
parts of her body. (Couliano 19)

According to Cappelanus, the male lover seeks to possess the beloved

female through his phantasy. Yet Ioan Couliano, the twentieth-century
scholar who drew connections between eros and magic, relates that “the
feminine phantasm can then take entire possession of … the lover, produc-
ing … a pathological Eros … [a] variety of melancholia (amor heroes)”
(Couliano 19). Couliano states that the Renaissance pathological Eros was
thought to be a “phantasmic” infection that entered the eyes of the man.
According to Couliano, the “very image of the woman has entered the
[man’s] spirit through the eyes and, through the optic nerve, has been
transmitted to the sensory spirit … [and then] [t]ransformed into a phan-
tasm…. Inducing a disordered state of reasoning (virtus estimative) … a
spiritual sickness” (21). The victim, instead of trying to overcome the ill-
ness, “delights [in] the sickness that consumes it” (22). This pathological
eros is parallel to that type of eros that Thorton tells us creates madness.
“For the Greeks, … [e]xcessive passion is fundamentally a form of insanity,
a destruction of the rational mind’s control over the body” (17). Such
passion seems best exemplified in Sappho’s poetry where the speaker
states, “[w]henever I see you, sound fails, my tongue falters, thin fire steals
through my limbs, an inner roar, and darkness shrouds my ears and eyes.”
(Fragment 31, translated by Catullus). This dangerous, debilitating, and
pathological Eros is clearly represented in Byatt’s novel.
Christabel and Ash suffer from a type of pathological eros that begins
in an innocent way through their exchanges of poetry. Eventually, Ash
contemplates the nature of sexual love in a short poem where the persona
asks, “And is love then more/Than the kick galvanic/Or the thundering
roar/Of Ash volcanic/Belched from some crater/Of earth-fire within?/
Are we automata/or Angel-kin?” (297). This poem alludes to Sappho’s
idea that our senses are overcome whenever Eros strikes; we are no longer
in control of our beings and emotions but are possessed. Yet the persona
also suggests that perhaps there is some physiological determinism behind
this “kick galvanic,” adding a biological layer to the madness which over-
takes us.25
Christabel has struggled with Ash’s “possession” of her both in a liter-
ary and physical way. She initially withstands his intrusion in her life and
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “... unselfish kindness of the American missionaries, their
patience, sincerity and truthfulness, have won the
confidence and esteem of the natives, and in some
degree transferred those sentiments to the nation
represented by the missions, and prepared the way for the
free intercourse now commencing. It was very evident that
much of the apprehension they felt in taking upon
themselves the responsibilities of a treaty with us would
be diminished if they could have the Rev. Mr. Mattoon as
the first United States Consul to set the treaty in motion.”

A VISIT HOME
The first decade of Dr. House’s service was drawing to a close
without any apparent need for a furlough, as need was then
understood. He had become acclimated, accustomed to conditions
of Siamese life and was apparently contented with his bachelor
state. That the tropics had proved to be more friendly than he had
expected, is implied in his frequent expressions of surprise at
continued good health, even assuring his friends at home that his
physical condition was better than before he left America. But this
was not the common lot of missionaries in the early days. On the
tenth anniversary of his departure from New York he wrote:
“Of the company of the Grafton two already are dead
and three compelled to return home from broken health.
Mr. Mattoon and I alone are left on the field—besides Mrs.
Mattoon, the eighth of the party.”
The enervating conditions of life in Siam are described with good
understanding by Mr. George B. Bacon in his volume on Siam:
“It is when we remember the enervating influence of the
drowsy tropics upon character that we learn fitly to honour
the men and women by whom the inauguration of this new
era in Siamese history has been brought about. To live for
a little while among these sensuous influences without any
very serious intellectual work to do or any grave moral
 responsibility to bear is one thing; but to live a life among
them with such a constant strain upon the mind and heart
as the laying of the Christian foundations among heathen
must necessitate is quite another thing.
“This is what the missionaries of Siam have to do. The
battle is not with the prejudice of heathenism only, nor with
the vices and ignorance of bad men only; it is a battle with
nature itself.... The fierce sun wilts the vigour of his mind
and scorches up the fresh enthusiasm of his heart....
Therefore I give the greater honour to the earnest men
and to the patient women who are labouring and praying
for the coming of the Christian day to this people.”
When Dr. House parted with his parents in the New York harbour,
it was with the mutual expectation of never seeing each other again.
The separation was intensified in its realism by the slowness of
communication. His message announcing safe arrival in Siam did
not reach his parents until thirteen months after his departure. Their
response to this message was one which stirred his emotions to the
depths and made him oblivious of all around him; it told of his father
and mother and cousins kneeling together upon receipt of the news
and offering thanksgiving for the beginning of his missionary work.
The many friends who wrote letters to him doubtless never
understood what joy they gave him by their messages. After
receiving a consignment of mail he writes: “Their letters do cheer, do
strengthen, do inspire new resolves, and make me ashamed of my
unworthy service.” He records with expressions of esteem the
names of those from whom he receives communications by each
mail; and to one who knows something of the home church these
names stand as a roster of zealous workers, names of families that
continue to the present day.
The affectionate interest of the people was more than individual; it
came to be almost a community interest. The “monthly concert of
missions” saw the old session house filled with people eager to hear
the latest letter from their own foreign missionary. On his part he kept
in mind the day of these church gatherings and, allowing for the
difference of time, he estimated that his Monday morning hour of
devotions corresponded with the Sunday evening at home, and
surmised “in our little session room at Waterford many a fervent
prayer was going up for me and my fellow labourers from those
whose prayers will prevail at the throne of grace.”
It is not surprising that the home church grew mightily in the grace
of giving and developed a generosity which, long before forward
movements, attained a standard of giving more to beneficence than
to their own work and led the Presbytery in their gifts to the foreign
work. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D., who served the church as pastor 1863-
9 and later became one of the most powerful public advocates of
missions, bore this testimony to their zeal, on the occasion of the
church’s centennial in 1904:
“I owe much of my own enthusiasm for missions to my
six years in this church. It was most active and aggressive
in this department of service. It had its own missionary in
the field, and kept in living contact with him by
correspondence, gifts and prayer. This missionary
atmosphere I breathed with immense profit, and I was
compelled either to lead my people in missionary work or
to resign my pastorate. My real missionary education
began here in a church far ahead of me in intelligence and
enthusiasm for God’s work.”
No mention of home-going appears in Dr. House’s journal or
correspondence till a letter from his mother, in 1852, shows her
sternly-repressed desire to see her son:
“The Lord has a work for you to do in Siam, and much
as I long to see you I would not call you home from it. But
if health or benefit of mission require it, I would say ‘Come
at once—come home that we may embrace you once
more; and then return with new vigour to help forward that
glorious work which is yet to be accomplished in Siam.’”
More than a year later a joint letter from the parents enlarges upon
the subject. First the father writes:
 “When your health should make necessary that you
should have the invigourating influence of a sea voyage
and our climate, you may tax me for the expense, if I
should be spared. If not, I hope to leave sufficient at your
disposal to relieve your mind from any anxiety on the
subject. I am anxious only for you to be wise and to adopt
the course most likely to prolong your life and to serve
your Master as a missionary. Whether we shall be
permitted to meet again on earth is a small matter
(although there is nothing here that would offer me more
happiness) when compared with the magnitude of the
work in which you are engaged. Therefore I can say with
your dear mother that I cheerfully submit to the disposal of
Him who has crowned our lives with loving-kindness and
who will order all that concerns our children and ourselves
for His own glory.”
His mother then adds:
“I hope that you will not think because I do not ask you
to come home that we do not desire to see you—we do
indeed long for your return that we may see you in the
flesh. But we cannot, dare not ask you to desert your post
which we feel is one of great honour and responsibility;
and we trust you may be made an instrument in the hand
of God for doing much for the interest of the Redeemer’s
kingdom.”
Just at this juncture occurred the beclouding of friendship on the
part of King Mongkut. As the mission work came to a standstill, the
missionaries held a conference to determine their course of
procedure. Dr. House was ready to carry out his long-cherished plan
to transfer his labours to Lao, but the decree forbidding travel
rendered this impossible. The letter of his parents had insinuated
into his mind the alternative of a visit to America. When he casually
mentioned this to his fellow missionaries they gave cordial and
earnest approval. The expectation of the early arrival of a recruit to
their force removed the objection of leaving the Mattoons alone.
Then came the visit of Sir John Bowring, with his eventual offer of a
free passage to Singapore. Availing himself of this offer, Dr. House
left Siam in April, 1855, and sailed for America via England, reaching
home in midsummer.

WELCOME HOME
It was indeed a joyous homecoming. The son had come again to
the embrace of loving parents after an absence of nine years. He
had returned to his native land after many adventures in a strange
country, little known to the Western world. He had returned to a
church that keenly felt the solemnity of her commission to preach the
Gospel and had high reverence for her servants that carried the
banner. He had brought back first hand knowledge of pagan lands
and vivid memories of personal experiences and observations. Then
a returned missionary was more rare than even a departing
missionary. The Church at large was eager to see through the
missionary’s eyes the strange peoples to whom they were sending
the Gospel message.
Numerous opportunities came to Dr. House to tell his story. Large
audiences greeted him wherever he appeared. These opportunities
he used especially to awaken the Church to the importance of the
work in Siam. The periods of obstruction were past. The treaty with
England had just been completed, and the American government
was about to send an envoy to ask for a treaty. The glowing promise
of the sunrise inspired the hearts of people at home to listen with a
ready mind to his appeal. With great joy he secured two ready
recruits to go back with him, Rev. and Mrs. A. B. Morse. Following
this visitation to the churches a new interest in Siam is manifest
through the reports, and there began a series of reinforcements
checked only by the Civil War.

BELATED MARRIAGE
During this sojourn in America Dr. House was married on
November 27, 1855, to Miss Harriet Maria Pettit, formerly of
Waterford. The marriage came as a surprise to most of his friends.
He had so frequently declared that he would never marry that his
change of mind came without warning. His missionary friends had
frequently twitted him on this subject, but in good part he defended
his position. Usually after these banterings he would enter in his
journal the reason why he chose to go out single and why he thought
best to remain unmarried.
His argument was that it would have been an imposition upon a
woman to have led her into a strange world, into a primitive state of
civilisation, afar from kin and friends. He persuaded himself that the
care of a wife, the anxiety for her safety and the responsibility of
rearing children would seriously interfere with his one great purpose,
an undivided attention to the propagation of the Gospel. The
Siamese, among whom polygamy was practised, could not
understand why this one missionary had no wife. Several of the
princes suggested that he take a Siamese woman in marriage, and
one nobleman even offered to provide a wife for him.
However, there are indications that his arguments were as much
to repress his own idea as to confute the bantering. During those
years he was a permanent guest at the family of the Mattoons. He
frequently expresses generous appreciation of sharing the home
comforts of his friends, and confesses that he did not know how he
could have gotten along without this domestic care of Mrs. Mattoon.
Thus while stoically denying the need of a wife he gratefully accepts
the ministrations of the wife of his colleague.
Then, after having married and having fully settled in a home of his
own, his real feelings assert themselves, for he writes, upon return to
Siam:
“And mine, too, is a pleasant home, the one to which
four weary months voyaging have brought me, a
pleasanter home than once—for it has a new inmate.
Taking such a partner into the concern is indeed a great
addition to a bachelor establishment.”
And a year later:
 “You don’t know how nicely we are jogging on in the
good old road of domestic felicity. And when you hear me
say at the end of fourteen months that I am more fully than
ever of the opinion that I have as my companion in my
journey the most suitable one for me that could have been
found had I tarried seven months or seven years longer in
the States, you will allow that, at least, I am contented with
my choice.”
He shows the reversal of mind on this subject complete when, in
1871, he writes:
“I must confess that I feel this wholesale sending out of
unmarried women into the field just now so in vogue in our
church is an experiment.... And I do not think much better
of the sending unmarried young men to some fields. ’Tis a
pity the secretaries of our Board who ought to know the
wisest way do not guide opinion on this subject and more
strongly impress upon candidates who apply to them the
desirableness of making their arrangements before they
leave home—not but what Providence may bless some
favoured mortals more than they deserve.”

ORDINATION AND RETURN

Another event of personal moment to the doctor was his ordination
to the Christian ministry. Before his first departure for Siam he had
been licensed to preach, a Presbyterial authorisation necessary to
give the seal of approval to the preaching which it was expected
would be incidental to the medical profession. But now, having given
himself exclusively to the Gospel work he sought full ordination with
its authority to administer the sacraments and perform the rites of the
church. In January, 1856, he was duly ordained by the Presbytery of
Troy.
Accompanied by the new recruits, Rev. and Mrs. A. B. Morse, Dr.
House and his bride sailed in March, 1856, by way of England and
Singapore, and arrived at Bangkok in July. The reception accorded
Dr. and Mrs. House was an evidence of the position which the
missionary had attained in the esteem of the Siamese. He was the
recipient of many gifts from the Chinese and Siamese servants and
attendants at the mission; while a period of two weeks was largely
occupied with calls from the prime minister, the minister of foreign
affairs, several of the princes, many of the old friends among the
nobles, the old teachers and a multitude of native friends at large.
The welcome was so spontaneous that it gave evidence of a
genuine honour, and of an appreciation of the years of service
rendered by the doctor higher than he had imagined the people felt.
But perhaps the most signal token of esteem on this occasion was
shown by King Mongkut. No advance notice of the arrival of Dr.
House and party having been received, their appearance at the
customs house some miles below the city was a surprise, which in
some manner was quickly heralded to the king, so that when the
party approached the city, officials were waiting to receive them:
“Before we got to our own landing our friendly
neighbour, H. R. H. Prince Kromma Luang Wongsa, hailed
us, and we must needs land at his place. Shaking of
hands was not enough, but his arm was offered in English
fashion ... and thus escorted by the leading prince of the
kingdom was Harriette conducted to her future mission
home, Mr. Mattoon and I following.... And soon our native
church members and teachers and the school children
came flocking around.
“But the king had heard of my arrival and the prince had
a message from him for me that he was waiting to see me
at the palace. So, thither I must go—the prince took me in
his own boat. Some public ceremony was going on, and
the whole court was assembled at the river house in front
of the palace. The king, on a lofty platform handsomely
roofed over, by the water edge; while yet at a distance he
saw me and called out my name, inviting me to ascend
the steps that led to his pavilioned seat, when he shook
hands cordially. His Majesty spoke of the letter he had
received from me while away. Then he said, ‘Your wife has
 come with you!’—and then turning to his courtiers added,
‘Formerly Maw House declared he would not have a wife,
and now he has taken one.’ ‘Oh, your majesty,’ I replied,
‘wisdom has come to me and I have changed my heart in
that matter,’ which made them all smile.
“He then said my wife must come and visit the royal
palace. He had missed me very much. I must come and
live near him. Turning to one of his ministers he said, ‘He
guessed they must build a house over there’ (pointing out
a spot near the palace). I must take an office under the
government. The prime minister told me I must become a
Siamese nobleman.”
Dr. House and Mr. Mattoon were sent for again by the king a few
days later, and availed themselves of this occasion to present to His
Majesty several useful presents sent out by American admirers.

TOURS WITH MRS. HOUSE

While in America, in 1855, the Sunday school of his home church
provided funds for the purchase and outfitting of a boat for touring.
The result was a boat equipped for the work, affording more comfort
than possible in the native boats. Along the side of the small cabin,
lockers were fitted, serving both as seats and place for storage. A
removable table between afforded space for writing or eating. For
the night an extension bridged the space between the lockers, and
this, covered with cushions, made a comfortable double bed. In
December of 1856 Dr. House made the first tour with Mrs. House.
Customs, and scenes in Siam had by this time grown so familiar to
him that his letters home do not contain details as did his earlier
letters. Their first tour together, in company with some of the other
missionaries, was up the Meklong River in western Siam as far as
the town of Kanburi amidst some fine mountain scenery. Several
other trips occurred; one of them to Petrui:
“A fortnight or more,” he writes, “exploring some of the
totally unvisited districts of the eastern portion of the plain
 which constitutes central Siam—you know my passion for
penetrating into remote and unexplored regions and out of
the way places.”
If perchance this enthusiasm conveys the impression that these
journeys were of unmingled pleasure and simple romance it is well to
have that fancy checked by some material facts; for, continuing the
narrative of this trip, the doctor writes:
“Upon review of the tour I can recall but few that I
remember with more satisfaction. But for pleasure—I
cannot say much for a tour. Our confined quarters (cabin
five by seven), the rocking of the boat with every
movement of ours or of the boatmen, the hot sun upon the
roof and sides by day and the myriads of mosquitos as the
evening comes on (and such ravenous merciless
mosquitos, too), the monotony of the scenery on the lower
stream and absence of all that is pretty or picturesque in
the villages and houses of the natives, and last but not
least the universal uproar among all the dogs whenever
one steps ashore anywhere in their villages—all detract
largely from the romance and not a little from the comfort
of a mission tour in this country.”

MARKS OF GROWTH
Dr. House continued to be superintendent of the mission school
after his return in 1856, and although he makes very few references
to this work in his journal from now on, yet there are occasional
items which mark the growth. From this period Mrs. House appears
as a factor in the educational work, but her achievements will occupy
a separate chapter. In August after the return the doctor writes:
“Our school is much enlarged—many applicants to learn
English. The eldest child of the son of the Prime Minister
now comes regularly to Mrs. Mattoon, a very bright lad of
seven. At the request of the king I am teaching two
princes; one of sixteen, his grandson, the other a
 grandson of the late king, a boy of eleven. And by order of
H. M. a dozen of the sons of his servants are now learning
English in our school as day scholars.... There is a
spacious bamboo school house going up in the back part
of our lot.”
This growth, however, was in the educational work. While the
workers did not belittle the importance of the school, they were well-
nigh sick of heart with deferred hopes, a feeling that is reflected in
their report to the Board for the year 1856:
“It requires no little faith to conduct, day after day and
year after year, these patient labours; especially as they
have not resulted in the conversion of those on whom
time, talents and prayers of the missionaries are spent.”
This increase in school was so rapid that shortly after they had
established themselves on the site granted by the king it became
evident that this lot in the city would not allow for the expansion
commensurate with the growth. With the awakening of a desire for
education and of an interest in the foreign religion the earlier
necessity of having a location within the city itself had passed, for
what the mission had to offer was being sought after. Accordingly, a
parcel of ground, the gift of Mr. D. O. King, was obtained on the west
bank of the river in the lower suburbs known as Sumray. There new
buildings were erected, and in November, 1857, the transfer of the
mission was effected to that site, which became the scene of the
most notable achievements of the mission in Bangkok and continues
to the present day the center of a pervasive Christian influence.
At the end of the first year in the new location, Dr. House wrote
home: “School occupies me much of the time. We have a new
Siamese teacher, a most respectable old gentleman; may he get
good from us, saving good.” This teacher was Nai Chune, who, a
year later, became the first Siamese convert. The significance of this
addition to the teaching force is that the pupils are no longer
predominantly Chinese lads, but that the demand for teaching the
Siamese language requires a native teacher.
 The winter season, being free from rains, was the time best suited
for touring in the country. In February of 1858 Dr. and Mrs. House
started up the Meinam to revisit the scenes of their former tour.
Finding the river alive with pilgrims going to Prabat for the annual
veneration of Buddha’s footprint, they decided to join the pilgrimage
as affording an excellent opportunity for distributing tracts. On this
visit to the shrine the visitors did not experience the same opposition
to entering the sanctum as Dr. House had on his first visit.

A PRESBYTERY ORGANISED
The recruits to the mission force so far had been temporary
additions only. Owing to the death of his wife, followed by the failure
of his own health, Mr. Bush was compelled to resign after four years.
Mr. Morse, who went out upon Dr. House’s return, was forced to give
up within two years by reason of health. At the end of ten years there
had been only one net increase in the mission force, Mrs. House. In
1858 two men arrived who became important factors in the work,
Rev. Daniel McGilvary and Rev. Jonathan Wilson, with his wife.
When the announcement was received that these two men had been
commissioned, Dr. House wrote home:
“These two friends became interested in Siam mission
at the time of my visit to Princeton. If they reach us, I shall
have new reason to bless the heavenly Guide who led me
almost unwillingly back to my native land.”
The doctor’s estimate of the reflex benefit to Siam from that trip to
America was all too modest; for that visit was the beginning of an
ever increasing interest in that country on the part of the church and
of a constantly enlarging supply of men and money. Concerning this
visit to Princeton, Dr. McGilvary says in his Autobiography:
“I was entering upon my senior year when it was
announced that Dr. S. R. House, of Siam, would address
the students. Expectation was on tip-toe to hear from this
new kingdom of Siam. The address was a revelation to
me.... My hesitation was ended....
 “The call found Jonathan Wilson and myself in much the
same state of expectancy, awaiting for a clear revelation of
duty. After anxious consultation and prayer together and
with Dr. House, we promised him that we would give the
matter our serious thought; and that if the Lord should
lead us thither we would go.”
With the increase of ordained men on the field, the time seemed
ripe to associate themselves together in the official relationship of a
Presbytery. At an informal meeting in the summer of 1858 the
following call was issued:
“Whereas, in the providence of God there are now in the
mission a sufficient number of ordained ministers to
constitute a Presbytery and as it seems expedient that we,
cut off as we are from the privileges and oversight of our
respective Presbyteries, should meet together from time to
time in a formal public capacity as a judicatory of the
Church of Christ to consult for her best interests in this our
field of labour; and hoping that it may be beneficial to
ourselves and the Church at large,
“Therefore, Resolved, That in accordance with the
resolutions of the General Assembly held in Baltimore in
May, 1848, making provision for ‘the formation of
Presbyteries by the action of missionaries in foreign fields’
a Presbytery be constituted at Bangkok on the first day of
September next, to be called the Presbytery of Siam and
to be composed of the following persons, viz.: Rev.
Stephen Mattoon and Rev. S. R. House, of the Presbytery
of Troy, New York; Rev. J. Wilson, of the Presbytery of
Beaver, Pennsylvania, and Rev. Daniel McGilvary, of the
Presbytery of Orange, North Carolina; and that said
Presbytery be opened by a sermon by Rev. S. Mattoon,
the oldest of the ministers of the mission; and
“Resolved, second, That the day of the opening of the
Presbytery be observed by the members of the mission as
a day of special prayer for the blessing of the Spirit of God
 upon us, and that a special meeting for prayer be held at 9
a. m.”
At the appointed time the Presbytery of Siam was formally
organised, Rev. Samuel R. House being chosen first Moderator and
Rev. Daniel McGilvary being elected Stated Clerk. Mr. Mattoon, who
was about to take a furlough in America, was appointed the first
commissioner to the General Assembly, to meet in Indianapolis the
following spring. Here, again, as in the organisation of the first
church, the missionaries were taking a step in anticipation of the fruit
of faith more than in actual need. Two of the very important functions
of a Presbytery are to oversee the churches and to ordain
candidates for the ministry. But there was only one church in Siam at
the time and there were only two “native” members on the roll; and a
Presbytery could add little to the fellowship of the missionaries
except the formalities. However, the workers in the field were certain
of the harvest and in simple faith they went about setting up the
organisation for the proper care and nurture of the native churches
that were yet to be established.
In December of 1858, when the dry season had returned, Dr.
House, accompanied by Mr. McGilvary, made a twelve-day tour up
the Meinam, commencing labours at Angtong and continuing as far
as Bansaket. The results of the tour were unusually hopeful:
“In two or three instances it did seem as if the Spirit had
prepared their hearts to welcome the doctrine of
Christianity.... I could not but say to my good Brother
McGilvary, who as well as myself was struck with the deep
interest manifested, ‘Surely there must be much prayer
going up for us here in Siam.’ Tears would come in my
eyes as I solemnly urged them to leave their refuge of lies
and trust in a living Saviour, ready and mighty to save.
And on their part they desired to know, not how they might
make merit (the usual question of Siamese), but what they
were to do to secure the salvation, the news of which then
for the first time reached their ears. It seemed like the
dawning of a better day.”
 IX
FIRST THE DAWN, THEN THE
DAYLIGHT
In the annals of missions much has been made of the long years of
patient labour before a first convert was gained in other lands. It is
written of Judson that he preached the Gospel six years in Burma
before a native made confession of the Christian faith. Morrison
patiently taught the Gospel seven years in China before he was
rewarded with one disciple. The Telegu mission in India is described
as one of the most remarkable in the history of missions in the
contrast between the first long fruitless period and then the rapid
growth; and in confirmation it is cited that “at the end of two decades
only one native assistant could be reported, one church with nine
members and two schools with sixty-three pupils.”
But in Siam, from the time Dr. Gutzlaff arrived until the first
enduring convert from among the Siamese was gained, thirty-one
years elapsed. It is true that during those years much of the energy
of the other missions had been directed toward the conversion of the
ex-patriate Chinese, from whom there had been an encouraging
response; none the less, the Siamese were also the object of
constant prayer and faithful wooing. From the time that Dr. House
and Mr. Mattoon reached Siam to devote themselves particularly to
the winning of the Siamese, twelve years and six months passed
before one lone Siamese renounced the faith of his fathers and
acknowledged the Christian religion to be the truth. These
wearisome years of waiting were lengthened in their tediousness by
the chagrin of having impostors simulate conversion for iniquitous
ends.
The story of this remarkable first native convert is best given by Dr.
House in his own way. First under date of March 6, 1859, he writes
home of the promise of the first-fruit:
“I have had a long talk with Nai Chune. Since the fourth
month of last year he has been convinced of the truth of
Christianity. He has broken the necks of his household
gods and melted them. ‘If I think he venerates the gods
still he will go into the temple and do the same.’ Those
stories in their sacred books about its raining diamonds
and gold he regards not like the beneficent miracles of
Christ which I told him.
“I was going to give him some idea of the historical
evidences when he cut me short by saying, ‘I have tried
Buddhism—and what benefit has it been to me? I have
thrown away a large part of my life in studying it. But I was
a child then—God must forgive me.’ He has ceased to
gamble and to drink spirits, to both of which he formerly
was addicted. He says that he sometimes weeps with joy
when he thinks of God’s goodness to him. He prays to
Jehovah, keeps the Sabbath, and for months has been a
faithful attendant on preaching, to which he often invites
his acquaintances, bringing them with him.
“He is an educated man of about forty years, has a wife
but no living children. He was once a priest, in the king’s
own watt for some eight years. At one time he used to call
upon me often and learned several chemical experiments.
Since the mission moved to its new location in his
neighbourhood (where he has a small property) he called
to renew acquaintance. I had much conversation with him
formerly about religion; but he seemed almost too willing
to believe. I mistrusted his motives, past experience
having made me too cautious perhaps. When he called
 subsequently I had no confidence in his sincerity. Mr.
Mattoon, however, thought somewhat better of him.
“He is now the Siamese teacher of our school, and is
very faithful to his duties. The most interesting feature of
his case and what, with other things, has removed my
doubts, is the true moral courage with which he avows his
change of his belief to his countrymen and relatives. I do
not think anything but the grace of God could make a
Siamese brave enough to do this.”
Five months later, the doctor records the reception of the convert
into the Mission Church on Aug. 7, 1859:
“My eyes have at length been permitted to see what has
long been my heart’s desire and prayer to God, the
baptism of a Siamese. Nay, to my unworthy hands has this
privilege fallen, to receive into the visible fold of Christ by
the ordinance of His appointing this new member of the
flock.
“For over twelve years of hope deferred has this great
blessing been sought and prayed for, but ‘sought and
never found’ till now. Blessed be the name of Him who in
His mercy and sovereign grace has been pleased to visit
us with His favour and make the teaching and preaching
of His servants here the means at last of bringing one
heathen soul out of nature’s darkness into the light and
peace of His kingdom.
“Nai Chune, a Siamese, an educated man of nearly
forty years of age, after a satisfactory examination on his
views and experience was today received to our
fellowship by baptism in the sacred name of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost. May he walk worthily of the
name he has named today, and be a witness for Christ his
God and Saviour among his countrymen. He appears
remarkably well. He is courteous and intelligent, a true
Siamese gentleman in manners; is serious-minded,
 sedate, seems to realise the goodness of his Heavenly
Father to him.”
The joy of this conversion was soon followed by a shadow of
sorrow. For a little more than three months later occurred the death
of faithful Quakieng. Fortunately the work among the Siamese had
developed so favourably that less emphasis was being placed on the
instruction in Chinese; and in a sense Nai Chune took the place of
Quakieng, but with a transfer of the major effort to the teaching of the
Siamese language.
During this year King Mongkut had finished a new grand audience
hall in connection with the palace, fashioned partly in European
style. At the opening of the hall the king gave a feast to which many
of the European and American sojourners were invited, among
whom were Mr. and Mrs. House. In a letter to his father the doctor
tells privately of a proffer of honour and service made to him by the
king: “H. M. said, ‘You with your wife must come and live here [at the
palace] and have the young princes, my children, for your pupils.’ I
excused myself, my hands being already full.” With the cessation of
teaching by the missionary ladies in the palace, the king had
engaged an English lady, Mrs. Leonowens, as a tutor for some of the
inmates of the palace, including his sons. Apparently, however, her
teaching duties diminished after a time and she was occupied chiefly
as an amanuensis for the king, and she was still connected with the
palace at the time the king made this request of Dr. House.
Whether the king had serious intent in this proposition it is difficult
to judge; but the suggestion does indicate that he still held Dr. House
in high regard and that his estimation for Western education had not
waned. The mission school by this time had become a well-
established, well-organised institution, the management of which
required the full attention of the doctor. His original term of service as
Superintendent continued until 1861, when relinquishment of the
office was apparently due to the fact that he was appointed to open a
new mission station at Petchaburi.

NEW STATION AT PETCHABURI

 Although the work at Bangkok had been steadily growing, no
extension of the field was undertaken until 1861, when a station was
opened at Petchaburi, where Dr. House and Mr. Mattoon had made
several visits. In that year two new missionaries with their wives had
come out in company with Rev. and Mrs. Mattoon on their return
from furlough in America; these were Rev. S. G. McFarland and Rev.
N. A. McDonald. Of the many places where the missionaries had
visited with the hopes of one day establishing a local work,
Petchaburi then seemed the most favourable because the acting
governor had personally solicited the missionaries to provide
teaching of English; and had offered, on condition that they would
teach his son the language, to provide a place for their school.
The Mission had voted to assign Dr. and Mrs. House to establish
the new station. The doctor visited the field, procured a lot and made
ready for the work, and then returned to bring his wife. But the day
before their departure, the doctor had the misfortune to fall from a
horse, sustaining injuries which, at the time, it was feared would
prove to be permanent. Under these circumstances the mission
changed the appointment, and sent instead Revs. Daniel McGilvary
and S. G. McFarland with their wives, who thus became the first
occupants of the new mission.
At this point it will be interesting to note that in his journal, in 1861,
Dr. House records that the missionaries had felt constrained to ask
the Board for an increase in salary from the prevailing six hundred
dollars to seven hundred dollars, giving as a reason that the cost of
living had greatly increased since the country had been opened to
Western commerce, so that articles of provisions had in some cases
increased as much as one hundred per cent. Dr. House himself had
received a patrimony at the death of his father, which he used not
only to supplement his salary for living expenses, but very
generously for assisting in the work of the mission. Entries in the
journal indicate that he had undertaken, at his own expense, repairs
and enlargement of the mission house in which he lived.

THE REMARKABLE STORY OF NAI KAWN

 Within a month after the new station at Petchaburi was opened,
the missionaries reported the extraordinary case of a Siamese who
had come to believe upon God and Christ through portions of the
Scripture that had come into his hands, although he had never seen
a missionary and had never met a Christian. The name of this man
was Nai Kawn. Writing to his family in America under date of July 17,
1861, Dr. House quotes in part from a letter which Mrs. McFarland
had written to Mrs. House giving the story; and in part from Mr.
McGilvary:
“I wish Dr. H. could be here to examine a ‘diamond’ we
have found here (i. e., a native of Petchaburi, which name
means ‘city of diamonds’). We do believe it a true, genuine
diamond, and though it needs to be polished it will one
day shine in our Saviour’s diadem in glory. It seems an
extraordinary case in many respects. The man is a middle
aged Siamese, resides about five miles from Petchaburi
capital; had never seen a missionary, but some of our
Christian tracts and portions of the Scripture—which he
had got from his neighbours—appears to have been the
means of enlightening his mind and converting his heart.
He had taught his little boy the Lord’s prayer and the ten
commandments.”
“Mr. McG. writes: He certainly has the clearest idea of
the Scripture of any heathen convert I have met with. He
literally knows John, Acts, Romans (all the Bible he has
yet seen) by heart; can repeat whole chapters without
missing a word. He evidently studied for months and
years.... Seems delighted to find us, as if his highest wish
had been realised. Wishes to come and live with us at
once to learn more perfectly the Gospel, and to assist to
teach and distribute books. To try his sincerity, no
encouragement was offered him, fearing he might wish
support from the missionary. ‘Oh, no,—he wished no
compensation, as he had enough to live on.’ He has a few
hundred ticals and wants no more. He has settled one son
with three hundred ticals, and the other son he has just left