cold comfort again …

Told you I couldn’t stop.

I can read the following excerpt again and again and I just HOWL with laughter every time. I’m telling you, the woman was a comedic genius. The parody here … I’m sorry. It kills me.

Okay. So it’s a scene featuring our heroine, Flora, “who likes things tidy,” and Mr. Mybug (whose real name is Mr. Meyerburg, but Flora calls him “Mybug). Mr. Mybug is — as described by Ms. Truss — ‘the corpulent and harmless devotee of D.H. Lawrence’ and Flora, um, doesn’t really care for him. Flora likes to go on walks. Mr. Mybug likes to interrupt her walks and Flora doesn’t really care for that, either.

They used sometimes to walk through a pleasant wood of young birch trees which were just beginning to come into bud. The stems reminded Mr. Mybug of phallic symbols and the buds made Mr. Mybug think of nipples and virgins. Mr. Mybug pointed out to Flora that he and she were walking on seeds which were germinating in the womb of the earth. He said it made him feel as if he were trampling on the body of a great brown woman. He felt as if he were a partner in some mighty rite of gestation.

Flora used sometimes to ask him the name of a tree, but he never knew.

Yet there were occasions when he was not reminded of a pair of large breasts by the distant hills. Then, he would stand looking at the woods upon the horizon. He would wrinkle up his eyes and breathe deeply through his nostrils and say that the view reminded him of one of Poussin’s lovely things. Or he would pause and peer in a pool and say it was like a painting by Manet.

And to be fair to Mr. Mybug, it must be admitted he was sometimes interested by the social problems of the day. Only yesterday, while he and Flora were walking through an alley of rhododendrons on an estate which was open to the public, he had discussed a case of arrest in Hyde Park. The rhododendrons made him think of Hyde Park. He said that it was impossible to sit down for five minutes in Hyde Park after seven o’clock in the evening without either being accosted or arrested. There were many homosexuals to be seen in Hyde Park. Prostitutes, too.

God! those rhododendron buds had a phallic, urgent look!

Sooner or later we should have to tackle the problems of homosexuality. We should have to tackle the problem of Lesbians and old maids.

God! that little pool down there in the hollow was shaped like somebody’s navel! He would like to drag off his clothes and leap into it.

There was another problem. We should have to tackle that, too. In no other country but England was there so much pruriency about nakedness. If we all went about naked, sexual desire would automatically disappear. Had Flora ever been to a party where everybody took off all their clothes? Mr. Mybug had. Once a whole lot of us bathed in the river with nothing on and afterwards little Harriet Belmont sat naked in the grass and played to us on her flute. It was delicious; so gay and simple and natural. And Billie Polswett danced a Hawaiian love-dance, making all the gestures that are usually omitted in the stage version. Her husband had danced, too. It had been lovely; so warm and natural and real, somehow.

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