Letter from Hamish

10/6/09

Metung

Dear Angus,

How are you? I am well. I have been doing some Research. I have been on the trail of Trumbles in literature, inspired by your blog. You know, Angus, I only recently discovered how immense your blog is. I was aware, of course, of the blog entries which you sent me links unto, but it was only a week or two ago that I realized there was more material there that I could access. Wow! I don’t know how you do it, and hold down a job, and write a book! Your blog, Angus, puts me in mind of Thomas de Quincey, who saw the totality of his work in the nature of a Gothic Cathedral, each tiny part a piece of an enormous, colossal, evolving whole, The English Mail Coach—the Nave, etc., anyway, I only saw your Virginia Woolf piece a few days ago, after quite a lot of reading. I had set myself the task of finding the Trumble reference I remembered, indistinctly, from my studies at Cambridge with my modernism tutor. I failed to impress him from an early date with my researches on T. S. Eliot, who, I discovered had exchanged several amiable and charming letters with Groucho Marx, which I drew his reluctant attention to, and later in an informal “symposium”-style tutorial at the pub, I had interjected a remark about April being truly-ruly the cruelest month where I come from (it was because I was fed up with seasonal references being northern-hemispheric-o-centric). Anyway, I decided to re-read V. Woolf. I had a stroke of luck—I quickly found a copy of To The Lighthouse in the op shop. I was sure this was the book—so sure that after I scanned it for Mr. Trumble in vain, I read it properly, to be sure, to no avail. My local library coughed up Mrs. Dalloway which was my next guess, but again, no dice. I had, however, read another of this lesbotic genius’ mistresspieces, and while I agree with your assessment of her Bloomsbury snobbisme, I was getting “into” them, as they say in the classics. But still Mr. Trumble eluded me—no matter, I was sure that The Waves would be the one. My local library network had exhausted itself giving up Mrs. Dalloway, but nowadays we library patrons can borrow from any library across Victoria, and Swan Hill had a copy of The Waves. However, after 2 weeks my library told me that the Swan Hill Waves was “missing”—imagine that, Angus!—but the kind and helpful librarian at Wonthaggi told me—not to worry—he would organise another copy—leave it to him. 2 weeks later I got an email that my “Waves” was ready to collect. Well, I was excited, then deflated because I realized you had found the reference by yourself, but when I collected the book, I got the scent of the chase again, because what I had got was the 1976 Hogarth Press edition of V. W.’s The Waves—the two holograph drafts transcribed and edited by J. W. Graham, who must have been ever so keen on V. W., because he has copied out her notebooks and added all her crossings out, etc. (as you can see). I realized that here was an opportunity for original Trumble research, so I commenced reading. Let me say that, while I cannot identify the Trumble episode in any form in the first draft, and there is a Turnbull/Trumble passage in the second draft (see over), the reading was not unprofitable. Oh no. The first draft contains dozens and dozens of references to Louis, the Australian, son of a banker and his Australian accent, boomerangs, colonial inferiority—that Virginia had a definite idea about Louis and his Australian origin and she made sure she didn’t forget it for subsequent drafts. I thought about that a lot, and it occurred to me that she probably didn’t know many Australians, but as she cast her mind back to the twilight years of Victoria, and the Golden Age of Cricket, in the nostalgic glow of her method, one name might have popped up in the stream of her consciousness—Hugh Trumble, Australian test cricket champion, and, let’s not forget, bank manager. Is it not possible, no no, almost certain, that when casting about for a name for her gentleman on a train, her mind free-associating behind the twin filters of her arch-lesbotic superciliousness, and her disappointing anti-Australian prejudices, her final choice is actually an unintended tribute to a great and noble Trumble,

A mighty tall trundler named Hugh,

Who oft saved the skin of the ’Roo,

The foe thought him dead,

But he popped up his head,

“If you want me, I’ll soon pull you through!”?

Keep up the good work Angus.

Lots of love from Hamish.

P.S. What about Trumbles in art? I think we can by now consider Trumble and Trumbull to be interchangeable, especially in the distant past. Have you considered the case of John Trumbull (1756-1843), the American artist who fought in the War of Independence, after which he traveled to London and paris (as many Trumbles before and since) and worked with West the Quaker neoclassicist; apparently Trumbull is well represented in your American museums and he wrote his “Autobiography” (1841, repr. 1953). I got this out of the Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists—is there no field in which Penguins do not cover all aspects of life and learning? Must go now and scour the op shops of South Gippsland for hidden treasure.

x x x Hamish

Trumbles in Fiction III

In her experimental novel The Waves (1931), Virginia Woolf helped herself to the name of Trumble, and used it to sketch an exceedingly unattractive portrait of somebody who is small in business, but big in local government. Though marginally mitigated by the fact that this brief sketch is embedded in one of the garrulous Bernard’s long soliloquies, and that overt hostility projects instead from the oleaginous Neville—a cipher for Lytton Strachey—nevertheless Woolf’s vignette demonstrates at its most unattractive the unabashed snobbisme of Bloomsbury.

Nor is it at all clear to us why “Walter J. Trumble is the sort of name” that Woolf thought apt for this “elderly and apparently prosperous” gold-toothed husband (indulgent but unfaithful) who evidently made the unfortunate mistake of visiting the United States of America. My brother Hamish raised this baffling issue with his English tutor at Jesus College, Cambridge, in the early 1970s but received no satisfactory answer—indeed he formed the impression that the tutor (long forgotten) regarded the matter as unimportant.

“Louis and Neville,” said Bernard, “both sit silent. Both are absorbed. Both feel the presence of other people as a separating wall. But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings—see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off my lips. It seems that a match is set to a fire; something burns. An elderly and apparently prosperous man, a traveller, now gets in. And I at once wish to approach him; I instinctively dislike the sense of his presence, cold, unassimilated, among us. I do not believe in separation. We are not single. Also I wish to add to my collection of valuable observations upon the true nature of human life. My book will certainly run to many volumes, embracing every known variety of man and woman. I fill my mind with whatever happens to be the contents of a room or a railway carriage as one fills a fountain-pen in an inkpot. I have a steady unquenchable thirst. Now I feel by imperceptible signs, which I cannot yet interpret but will later, that his defiance is about to thaw. His solitude shows signs of cracking. He has passed a remark about a country house. A smoke ring issues from my lips (about crops) and circles him, bringing him into contact. The human voice has a disarming quality—(we are not single, we are one). As we exchange these few but amiable remarks about country houses, I furbish him up and make him concrete. He is indulgent as a husband but not faithful; a small builder who employs a few men. In local society he is important; is already a councillor, and perhaps in time will be mayor. He wears a large ornament, like a double tooth torn up by the roots, made of coral, hanging at his watch-chain. Walter J. Trumble is the sort of name that would fit him. He has been in America, on a business trip with his wife, and a double room in a smallish hotel cost him a whole month’s wages. His front tooth is stopped with gold.

“The fact is that I have little aptitude for reflection. I require the concrete in everything. It is so only that I lay hands upon the world. A good phrase, however, seems to me to have an independent existence. Yet I think it is likely that the best are made in solitude. They require some final refrigeration which I cannot give them, dabbling always in warm soluble words. My method, nevertheless, has certain advantages over theirs. Neville is repelled by the grossness of Trumble.”