Work Text:
Subject: the Hornblower/Kennedy relationship (was Re: Attribution of "I Will Not Be Your Ganymede")
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 08:26:15 -0400
From: "Juliet Moody"
Reply-To: CHAOS - Captain Hornblower and the Age of Sail
To: CHAOS@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU
I am at a loss as to how anyone could take my comment on the post-conference singing of "Barrett's Privateers" as anti-Canadian. I have nothing but respect for my Canadian colleagues or the quality of their singing, I simply wish they would inject a bit more variety into their repertoire. And surely I have better things to do with my time then engage in such juvenile attacks as I have been accused of.
On the subject of juvenile attacks, can somebody explain to me how the other Dr. Moody came to be at that pub, and seated right next to me as well? When I agreed to adjourn across the street to continue discussion, it was under the impression that the group would be limited to members of this listserv. If I had known that I was to be subjected once again to listening to that preposterous woman espouse her ridiculous notions, I would not have wasted my time.
I will never understand how anyone could still give any credence to her outlandish claims, not to mention her laughable obsession with the insipid Barbara Wellesley. Any question about the permanency of Kennedy's "death" in Kingston has surely been put soundly to rest by recent scholarly findings. I commend you most specifically to Catherine Marlowe's meticulously researched The Lives of Archibald Kennedy [Routledge Press, 2003] as well as my own paper, "The Kennedy Connection" presented as the conference's keynote address that same year. The cornerstone of my paper was, or course, the "Sunrise Letter", a scrap of paper found languishing in the depths of the Hornblower collection at the National Archives. I've transcribed the content of the letter below, for those without a copy ready to hand.
... as to the matter of W~, my Dear, the sun rises every morning, but never twice the same, nor is it quite the same man that sees it. Stint yourself nothing for my sake, nor him neither, I beg you, particularly in the matter of loyalty or affection, for having the marks of another sharp nip from the jaws of death fresh upon me, I tell you fair that I mean to live this new life in good earnest and give no quarter, and would see you do the same. You know by now, I hope, that I would always wish for your happiness and content, and that nothing of this sort can ever mar nor alter in any particular the kindness in which I hold both of you -- and you know also, or so I hope, that I am, if I may not quite say faithfully, at any rate eternally,your A.
Though maddeningly incomplete and undated, the "Sunrise Letter" is clear evidence of Kennedy's survival post-Kingston. The handwriting is undoubtedly Kennedy's and the references to "another sharp nip from the jaws of death" and "this new life" suggest strongly the first years after Kingston when Kennedy was in hiding and starting a new life under an assumed name. In addition, the "W" referenced is almost certainly William Bush, 1st Lt. on the Renown and later Hornblower's Lt. on the Hotspur and subsequent ships. Kennedy would have had no need to write to Hornblower of Bush when they were all serving together, thus increasing the likelihood that this letter postdates that time.
It is interesting to compare the tone of this letter to that of "Ganymede", If "Ganymede" is understood to have been written by Kennedy (and honestly Jamie, you can not possibly claim that Pellew could have written "Ganymede"; the man hadn't a poetic bone in his body) the contrast between it and the "Sunrise Letter" is striking. Both postdate Kingston, but the hopeful and altruistic tone of the letter clearly predates the pained, almost bitter tone of the poem. What happened in the intervening months or years to cause Kennedy to go from declaring himself Hornblower's "eternally" to requesting him to "take back his immortality" -- to allow Kennedy to rescind that eternal devotion?
Dr. J. Moody
Northwestern University