Lady Hamilton

 Maybe you had to be there. Matthew had his nineteenth-century dinner one evening in the mid-late 1970s in Pittsburgh. There were a couple dozen of us: grad students in art history, librarians, professors. The table stretched through the double doors between his living room and dining room. Several courses were served. I was costumed as Thomas Eakins. I don't remember who Dorothy dressed as. Julie came as Lady Hamilton, in a gauzy confection of white fabric. I so enjoyed meeting Lady Hamilton.

"In Rome I was glad to study: here [in Naples] I want only to live, forgetting myself and the world, and it is a strange experience for me to be in a society where everyone does nothing but enjoy himself. Sir William Hamilton, who is still living here as English ambassador, has now, after many years of devotion to the arts and the study of nature, found the acme of these delights in the person of an English girl of twenty with a beautiful face and a perfect figure. He has had a Greek costume made for her which becomes her extremely. Dressed in this, she lets down her hair and, with a few shawls, gives so much variety to her poses, gestures, expressions, etc., that the spectator can hardly believe his eyes. He sees what thousands of artists would have liked to express realized before him in movements and surprising transformations -- standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break. She knows how to arrange the folds of her veil to match each mood, and has a hundred ways of turning it into a head-dress. The old knight idolizes her and is enthusiastic about everything she does. In her, he has found all the antiquities, all the profiles of Sicilian coins, even the Apollo Belvedere. This much is certain: as a performance it's like nothing you ever saw before in your life. We have already enjoyed it on two evenings. This morning Tischbein is painting her portrait." (J.W. von Goethe, Italian Journey, translated by W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer, Penguin classics, 1970, page 208)

When I first read this paragraph an hour or so ago, I was smitten by the memory of the Pittsburgh dinner and Julie as Lady Hamilton. As I type it, the description of the tableaux vivants sounds rather like inappropriate behavior by older white men. Last night's group discussion was on "The new Puritans" from the October issue of The Atlantic. Maybe it's time to re-read The volcano lover by Susan Sontag.