Here's a letter based on a compilation of actual letters from Verna Aldrich. I found it hard to draw from the full gamut of her writings and represent the full complexity of their relationship while still having it be a convincing letter, since their relationship changed so much over time (from worshipful to resentful of Maud's taking advantage of her). This is from a more worshipful moment.
Darling Maudie
Well, I have had an anxious few days trying to get news of you-and I feel quite
exhausted. This evening I got the cable and it is some reassurance -- I can't
imagine you having gallstones -- you never have had. Maudie dear, I didn't know
how much I love you until I heard you were critically ill. Now take of yourself
and don't do anything startling, go easy.
I know how hard it all is but you must be brave and carry on
like my little soldier. You have had a
wonderful life-and more than all else you are a wonderful person yourself and
you must not let a feeling of pity and lethargy overwhelm the real, fine brain
that is down under all this trouble-I don't mean your fame and all that
greatness-but every bit of you I have known has shown a great, marvellously
lovely character-and I want that to come out. Darling, you don't think I would
have loved you all these trying, worrying years if you had just been a vain
shallow creature-there is something in you that is great and lovely-that
overcomes! That is not mastered by circumstances but masters circumstances.
Now, my Maudie must overcome the circumstances of the day! The little girl in
you must not be afraid to cry-she must be great! You have a definite work to
do, now do it!
Yours always,
Verna
Dear Maud,
This was supposed to be a love
letter.
At first I
was fascinated and a little horrified by you: by your unapologetic sensuality, your
skin, your queerness, your blatant Orientalism, this aura of the “Cult of the
Clitoris” that smolders around your image.
But the more I came to know about you, the less I liked
you. I was irritated that you fell into
the trap of suing Billings for libel – for the unthinkable charge of being a woman-loving
woman – resulting, of course, in the destruction of your career. But more than that, I hated how you treated
Verna, your loving and devoted partner, using and abusing her, demanding that she
maintain those palatial quarters with money neither of you had, how you kept
her under your thumb, how you explicitly went against her request and asked her
relatives for money, compromising her relationship with her family. I wonder how your relationship with Verna was
affected by your relationship with Margot Asquith, the prime minister’s wife,
who funded those quarters for twenty years before stopping. I hated that you were a liar and a leech and
a manipulator. I understand changing
your name to escape the infamy of your brother’s murder trial, but pretending
that your parents were highly educated doctors in your autobiography? Manipulating the press the way you did? Your life is this nightmarish mix of the tabloids
and conspiracy theories, from your brother drawing and quartering women in the church
to your entanglement with the non-existent Black Book coupling gays, Germans, Jews, and
the highest echelons of power in England during WWI. It
feels, so weirdly, like the fake news of today, the contingency and precarity
of truth, the inability to tell what is real.
So where does desire come into play? What possible pleasure can I take in thinking
and dancing about you? How do I make a
piece that wants to be about women reclaiming desire for other women, about
queer pleasure, about flipping the script with a wink and a naughty glance,
when all I feel for you is disgust and revulsion? How can spending time with you be generative,
life-giving, fun, sexy?
In
South Indian bhakti there’s a tradition of the ninda stuti. It’s a weird,
wonderful, counter-intuitive move whereby you basically trash-talk god, and it’s
a form of devotion. Devotion through hatred
and enmity.
So
here is my invocation:
May
I disrespect you.
May
I take liberties with you.
May
I misrepresent you.
May
I seek revenge on your image.
May
there be pleasure in taking you down a notch.
May
there be pleasure in imagining you as you never were.
Let
this piece be my ninda stuti to you.
With queer disgust,
Cynthia
QUESTIONS:
-Would this be compelling to read either of these letters to audience members one-on-one? What do they add to the existing material? Do they succeed in bringing out queerness and queer desire?
Re: my letter:
-I think it's too long -- suggestions for places to cut? Maybe this line: "I wonder how your relationship with Verna was
affected by your relationship with Margot Asquith, the prime minister’s wife,
who funded those quarters for twenty years before stopping."
-The paragraph about desire -- while I think it works within the letter itself -- runs the risk of telling the audience what the piece is about before they see it. Thoughts?
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