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| fig.45.22) Myster, his name is held to the page by a great weight |
The writer arrived in September,1846, having “decided to take (her) chances for life and fortune here.” South of Fort Dearborn, located at the river and what is today Michigan Avenue, everything was “an everlasting stretch of prairie and little sand-hills along the lake-shore. At the corner of Clark and Washington Streets stood the Methodist and Second Presbyterian Churches. Everything east of Clark Street and south of Madison Street was “open prairie [and] … large numbers of family cows.” A “country tavern,” the Southern Hotel, stood at the corner of State Street and Twelfth Street, near “Widow Clark’s fine residence … near Eighteenth street, near Michigan avenue.” Five bucks a week was the rate for “good board, furnished room, fuel, and lights, for gentleman and wife.” The monthly rent for a “good office” was four dollars. The rent of a “nice house, modern appointments” was $125.00 to $175.00 a year, paid in quarterly installments. The image above shows the city as it may have looked in the mid-1840's.
To write is to reason but it's also to construct. Specifically, it is to articulate an assumption of the present with its implied opacity and then hurl it out at the mostly diaphanous past. In this past where language can be lost, all writing becomes lost among those fluids until it's once more recovered. The library down the street is like this too. With it's quiet brick nestled in among the sweatered hordes of sturdy cottages and fine Queen Anne homes the library sits like it's a body. Evenly it's breathing in the sweet air until it gasps and eventually succumbs to its own ultimate nature. It's breast will have been torn and long since lost to the garbled joys of coupling or similarly, the shitting of rare meats or cheeses. When it's elbows have fallen away from it and the chimney on top gets crowded with too many birds, when the words from it's often borrowed soul have been soured or they've dimmed, then the nature of this thing will be blind and final.
There's the squeak of the north door and then the pile of glass that's been left in the kitchen underneath the storm of it all. There's the cup of her wincesome cheek and the lone banality of his tip-tapping-tippy-toes. Just as this stream of consciousness cannot be laid or defended, it cannot be determined exclusively by William James or foretold in the principles of his psychology from all the way back in 1890, that year of our Lord. Back and forth it will go between the two of them, Clarissa and Septimus howling. The dart and streak at each other from opposite ends of the room. He's not patient when kneeling like a dog and she will not be stupefied, “Fear no more the heat 'o the sun / Nor the furious winter's rages” goes the quote from Shakespeare's Cymbeline. These words are threaded through much of Mrs. Dalloway. They're like leaky pens spitting snakes at everyone's eyeballs, the constant of their judgement is like lost sex.
Clarissa might be difficult but she's also resourceful and very reasonable. She expects this to be an exchange among equals rather than a baking contest. It should be a little bit like it's Virginia Woolf's birthday in here. It should get a little bit glorious inside of here when the lights are drawn down. But the darkness of one's regret will not indicate its flavor, she's heard Septimus say. The simple porcelain cup beside him holds a lightly tempered tea of steeped peas and birch skin. From here she can see his labored brow as it's swung out from under the shock of his thick hair. Where his elbows is crooked, his frustration would seem to be carved as indelicately as the scowl that's been bolted below two hard eyes. When he answers, all is well. That's when she'll know.
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