University of Tulsa

Sitwell beyond the Semiotic: Gender, Race, and Empire in "Faade" Author(s): Marsha Bryant Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Fall, 2007), pp. 243-267 Published by: University of Tulsa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20455328 . Accessed: 13/10/2013 00:39
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Sitwell Race, and Gender, BeyondtheSemiotic: EmpireinFacade

MarshaBryant University ofFlorida

facts about EdithSitwell:she There areseveral indisputable was the most womenpoets,shewas a literary ofBritain's modernist celebrity, successful she remains bestknownfor she remains a canonical misfit, Facade.But from clear. Sitwell the issue ofhervaluehas provedfar was an established and poetry, prose,criticism, literary presenceby the 1920s,publishing well lectures and Her as as readings. avant-garde perfor journalism giving thesensethat campaigns heightened Sitwell was, in mances and spirited This association Leonard Woolf'swords,"up to theneck inmodernity."l as literary clout. Her critical volumes gainedher asmuch public ridicule ModernPoetry heras a serious andCriticism andAspects of positioned Poetry butby 1932F R. Leavis issued hisdamning womanof letters, pronounce ofpublicity rather ment that"theSitwells thanof belong to thehistory The onsetof WorldWar II prompted Sitwellto fashion a poetry poetry."2 ofworldly rather than marking a second phase gravitas playful innovation, forthepoet laureateship ofher career. She becamea contender aswell as a cross-Atlantic artist who received coveragein thepopular performing As a personality Sitwell was paradoxical, rebelling against traditional press. In heryouth while taking ancestry. genderroles pride inherPlantagenet of the she she savagedthenationalistic pastoralism Georgians;laterin life of the Order of theBritish delightedinbecominga Dame Commander and popular, text and performance, Poet and personality, literary Empire. have fueled Sitwell's and conservative: these rebellious chang oppositions for almost a century. critical fortunes ing inSitwell's canonical Gender has playeda crucialfactor posthumous woman in theBritish volumeofChief Modern status. She was the token and but sheneverappeared Poets my collegetextbook, ofBritain America,3 on the syllabus. She sunk to "smalland eccentric"statusinRichard O'Clair'sNorton ModernPoetry, which EllmannandRobert Anthology of her"extraordinary claimsthat personality" givesthepoems"amemorabil When feminism lack."4 andpoststructuralism thatthey otherwise ity might on Sitwell'srepu theacademyin the1980sand 90s, the impact reshaped into the she recededfurther mixed. Surprisingly, tation margins proved U.K. In The FaberBook inwomen'spoetry anthologies publishedin the for Fleur Adcock declared Women's ofTwentieth Century Poetry, example, 243

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thatSitwelloffered only"entertainment value," representing herwith a Sitwellentirely her single poem from Facade.Diana Scott omitted from and rhyth earlier BreadandRosesanthology.5 With their surfaces dazzling mic excess, Sitwell'ssignature poemsdidnot conform to theconfessional scene. Yet these samequalities women's bentof the made thepoems poetry when feminist critics revaluation ripefor psychoanalytic andpost adopted anomalous like structuralist theories toreassess figures Sitwelland Gertrude N. Pondrom was thefirst torevalue Stein.Cyrena thatthe Sitwell, arguing "an interior, ordream con world"that Facadepoemsexplore subconscious, More recently, Dowson haspraised trasts with socialstrictures. Sitwell Jane in representing for being"influential and investigating theunconscious," herat the head of the British positioning avant-garde. Drawingon Facade, Holly Lairdhas stressed Sitwell's with "thefemale and engagement figure to fruition has brought thefeminist with sexuality." GyllianPhillips trend In arguing for Kristeva.6 Sitwell'sreturn to of reading Facade through Julia overother prominence, this bodyofcriticism subversion privileges gender meanings-enabled especially definition of the semiotic(a byKristeva's a repressed, from discourse maternal disruptive emanating unconscious). I departfrom thesekey reassessments bymovingSitwellbeyond the on Facade. I agree semiotic whilemaintaining focus with Susan Stanford insistence that"moving does notmean forget Friedman's beyond gender a key component Yet ofmy argument.7 tingit,"and so genderremains have ignored theways inwhich her experimental ifSitwell'sdetractors poetry challenges gender constructs, her feminist defenders have ignored how it intersects with racialand imperialist meaningsof the modernist era. Africans Asians for Sitwell of and Throughout employs images Facade, comiceffect, and imperial unsettling English propriety unity while simul In particular, racialstereotypes. thedark,dubious, taneously reinforcing of the"shadylady" in showing and colonial figure how proves paramount women arenot always Itwould be sillyto the text's boisterous subversive. on thebasisof theseimages, labelSitwella racist and shortsighted simply As to ignore them. Jane has explained, women British modernists Garrity even as they often"reinscrib[e] therhetoric of empire resist it," adopting in theirtexts of complex, "a series strate and experimental ambivalent, and disidentification" In Sitwell's asEnglishwomen.8 giesof identification ofher Fagadepoemsadopt imperialist even as they case, several ideology satirize Victorianandmale authority While a few poemsemploy figures. race toquestionsocialnorms, thesequenceas a whole tendsto reinscribe an overview ofFacade and racialstereotypes of the time. Afterproviding Iwill assessthepowers of the its and limits Kristevan performance history, I will then Sitwell to criticalscrutiny. returned approachesthatrightly based approachto Facade,drawing arguefora more flexible, culturally on both the poems and music fora fuller of the text's understanding 244

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with raceand empire does not dimin socialmeanings. My engagement of but rather returns her to thecenter ishSitwell's canonical importance modernist practice.

as Both literary critics andmusicologists seeFacade:An Entertainment to the texts Continentalperformance Parade (by an Englishcounterpart Lunaire(by Albert Jean Cocteau,ErikSatie,andPablo Picasso)andPierrot Giraud andArnold Schoenberg). between Dame Facade, a collaboration and chamber Sitwelland SirWilliamWalton, combinesspoken poetry music ina dynamic of stylized andwitty interplay images, jaunty rhythms, Walton composed musical set allusions. Encouraged bySitwell's brothers, someof theexperimental for with the tings poemsshehad begunin 1920, an avant-garde event. aimofcreating The vocal partof thescoreappears as if itwere an instrumental valuesof each line, markingthe rhythmic betweenlentoand allegro, syllable (see fig. 1). Tempo fluctuates thusthe most rapid can provedifficult reciters toperform-and vocal sections for Facadewas staged with thepoet andmusi for audiencesto understand. so that ciansbehinda paintedcurtain, EdithSitwellrecited the majority a Sengerphone(a large-scale of her poems through megaphone).This hernotoriety, Pondrom unprecedented performance technique heightened as "the most radicalavant-garde observes, poet on theBritishscene" (p. 204). in theSitwellbrothers' One month after the initial draw performance a limited ofherFacadepoems; ingroomin1922,Sitwellpublished edition In 1923 thefirst circulated bothon thepageandon thestage.9 public they Aeolian Hall, prompting of Facade tookplace inLondon's performance or indifferent. were for mostpartdismissive that the The second responses in the ChenilGalleries (1926)proved muchmore suc publicperformance more times in the1920s. and Facadewas performed three Walton cessful, textas an his scorein 1951, which stabilized theperformance published fanfare followed The piece instrumental poem settings.t0 by twenty-one in the music repertoire, most recently continues recorded Chamber by the Music Societyof LincolnCenter (withLynnRedgraveas reciter) and the PamelaHunter).-" convention, MelologosEnsemble(with Following in theprograms at performances; Sitwell's distributed poemsare included allowsthepoet's more thanan incidental words As this role. accessibility Victoria heard the has noted,"no one who has habitually Glendinning can disentangle wordsandmusicofFacade together them... even though not a nor is are libretto music Edith's Walton's poems onlyan accompani
ment.""2

to Facade foundlittle Earlyresponses meaningotherthana desireto 245

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A~~~

A~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~J

IILI

X Ch A?I'

I'I

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2

ff

LL

Figure 1.Opening measures to "Lullaby forJumbo" fromFaqade: An Enlter tainment, by Edith Sitwell andWilliam Walton. (C)1951 Oxford Univer sityPress. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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shocktheaudience. What doesone do, for example, with thesonicexcesses that begin"Country Dance": "Thathobnailed goblin,thebob-tailed Hob, / and rollick Or with these nonsenserhymes Said, 'It is timeI began to rob"'? marine, ingrhythms: "Something liesbeyondthescene,theencre de chine, Hell / Black as a bison"?(Facade, obscene/ Horizon /In / pp. 55, 68). Such semiotic sounds have ofteneludedSitwell'scritics. Many have concluded thattheFacadepoemsamountto little more thannonsensical child'splay. For example, BlakeMorrisonhas sneered that"children may perhaps enjoy or assonanceormention of geese and goblinsand someof her rhyming for foxes."13 Sitwell'sprivileging of soundover Writingwith appreciation Marnie Parsons has concludedthat Sitwell's reader becomesso "inun sense, a rising and falling that datedbyan oceanofsounds, tide of rhyme" she might a shell."14 Sitwellherself seems "havegills, or sport not to ideally perhaps, have expected her audience to reacttoher poems with effortless auditory ShemaintainedthattheFacadepoems were serious into pleasure. "inquiries on rhythm and on speedof theuse of rhymes, and theeffect assonances, and in the middleof lines, aswell as dissonances, placed at thebeginning Given her description ofher at theend,and in most elaborate pattems."15 ownwork, itcan be little that have takenthepoems surprise many critics of their seriously only in terms technique. ofSitwell is their A keyadvantage todisable ofKristevan analyses ability hierarchies of soundand sense, adult problematic meaning and nonsense, and playful, masculineand femi and childish, serious and,by implication, for nine.Kristeva's also offers a framework and semiotic engaging rhythms We see some of this that can seem rhymes nonrepresentational. productive work in recent discussion of theFacadepoem "Lullaby for WalterBernhart's ofkinetic whichhe uses todetermine "thesemiotic status Jumbo," processes inpoeticrhythm." As we see in figure Walton's slow-tempo 1, segmentation a see-saw motion" the of thepoemproduces "gentle of6/8time, mimicking in alternation of short and longsounds a lullaby.16 Bernhart's on emphasis of semiotic Kristeva'stheory maternalrhythms (lullabies, rocking)recalls of an unconscious, discourse:a repressed, maternal language preoedipal statethatattachesthe infant to the mother's initially body. Enteringlan andmeaning-throughthe father, thechild guage-and thussignification then overfrom the maternalsemiotic intothe order. passes paternal symbolic ForKristeva, as symbolic function constitutes itself at thecostof "Language drive andcontinuous instinctual relation to the repressing mother," although are"two modalities" within thesemiotic and symbolic that prove"inseparable" Kristevainsists from theoutsetofher careerthat "the signifying process."'17 no discourse can be exclusively or symbolic, and so even the semiotic most ofSitwell's would signify acoustically experimental poems something. in revivinginterest in While the semiotichas proved indispensable in engagingthe nonsubversive aspects Sitwell, it proves less successful 247

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of Facade-especially when theyinflect women characters.This critical in impasse appears most clearly GaryDay andGinaWisker'simportant essay, "Recuperating andRevaluing: EdithSitwellandCharlotte Mew, "which was to linkSitwell's"seemingly the first interpretation nonsensical, sing-song of thesemiotic. verse" withKristeva's theory Arguingthatthe"post-structur awholesalerevaluation alistclimate" of the1990sprovedripefor ofSitwell's most famous Wisker discussthe linguistic frolic of Faqa.de's work, Day and piece,"SirBeelzebub": When
Sir his syllabub in thehotel inHell Be-elzebub called for Where Proserpine first fell, Blue as the gendarmerie were thewaves of the sea, (Rocking and shocking thebar-maid). (pp. 107-08)

and "incantatory The poem's "dazzling surfaces," repeated sounds, effect," in the constitution "theprimacy of the signifier theyassert, of highlight "Sir Beelzebub" also deliversparodic puns on AlfredLord meaning."18 a group who is"crossing thebar" toward Tennyson, of "temperance workers" Laureate's feet" up the comportment andhis staid wishingto"trip (hisproper As Day and toSitwell's Wisker pointout, this poem contributes metrics). ofVictorianculture"inher early work.Butwhen they larger "debunking ofwomen discussa Facade poem thatreinforces perceptions" "patriarchal claim that"the technical of theverse experiments ("Waltz"),thesecritics come tonothing"(pp. 67, 71). Here we see the risks of relying ultimately as a hermeneutic on thesemiotic toolfor Facade: itcannotexplainlinguistic thedominant play that doesnot transgress culture. of Facadeproves most flexible both in itsuse Gyllian Phillips'sreading ofKristevaand in itsdiscussion of linguistic and genderinstability. Phillips too far towardthe semioticend cautionsagainstpushinginterpretation of the linguistic spectrum, noting thatSitwell'spoems "playon the edge of nonsense," connotation"(p. and that Walton'smusic "isnot freefrom This understanding of semiotic sounds iswell attuned 72,my emphasis). no matterhow 'musicalized,' toKristeva, who pronounces that"no text, is on thecontrary, devoid ofmeaningor signification; musicalization plural of "Lullaby izes for meanings"(p. 52). For Phillips,theoddlyfusedimages evokeametaphorical Jumbo" who loses his elephant-as-"sleeping patriarch" power(p. 71):
Jumboasleep! Grey leaves thick-furred As his ears,keep Conversations blurred. Thicker thanhide

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Don Pasquito's bride And hisyoungest daughter

Watch the leaves Elephantine grey ... (pp. 40-41)

Is the trumpeting water;

Like other Facadepoems,this "semiotic murmur" opensupmeaningthrough ofvisualand rhythmic a rich entanglement registers (p.69). Phillipstouches text's on theperformance darkothers that bynotingtheclichedcastanets Don Pasquito's thatthenumber reinforce "Spanishness," and by suggesting of raceand colonialism aswell as "Long SteelGrass" mightbe readin terms not gender(pp. 70, 72).19 Althoughshedoes pursuethese meaningsinher AfricansandAsians often my positionthatFacade's analysis, theyinform more colonial thanfantasti prove more fixed and itsgeography thanfluid, we must shift our criticallocus cal. To move Sitwellbeyondthesemiotic, to thenational imaginary. from theunconscious

A goodplace tobeginrecovering is inFrank array ofracialimages Fayade's Dobson's curtain designforthefirst performance (see fig. 2). In thecenter a large female face withAfricanfeatures hair andwide nos appears (wooly itwas painted half redand half whiteon theactualcurtain, trils); layering racialsignification with harlequinade. Duringperformances EdithSitwell's More clearly from thisfigure's mouth. African is Sengerphone protruded mask of a man's face through whichOsbert Sitwellsometimes thesmaller read poems. HaroldActon's accountofan early performance confirmed that thisface was of "a blackamoor."20 At one level, Edith'sandOsbert'srecita masks made Facadeamodernist of tionsfrom behind these form minstrelsy, in the three voice blackcharacters. SusanGubar has especially poems that noted"the major roleracial ventriloquism playedinpoeticexperimentation" of this withVachel Lindsay's period, beginning 1914 poem,"TheCongo."'21 until1928,and later curtains British performances used the Dobson curtain But as didnot containsuchracialized commissioned by the Sitwells figures.22 in theperformance we shallsee, racestillfigures text ofFaqade-especially in thepoems. more traditional several ofSitwell's defenders have emphasized Curiously, her images ofblackness and shadows while ignoring their often obviousracial Sitwell's in 1947, inflections. Assessing KennethClark spoke development of "an occasionalblack shadowof sound" in Facade. John Lehmann fol lowedsuit, that"onecannothelpnoticing how often, commenting through D. Brophy the images, thedarksideof lifeisportrayed." James arguesthat Sitwell's motifof an "Empire ofShade" giveseven theFayide overarching In his akin to the and theSymbolists. poems a complexity Metaphysicals 249

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.. .*t..}.-~. -;. .S.-t.-i ----------1

Figure 2. Frank Dobson's curtain design for the original production of Fagade, which appeared inBritish Vogue in 1923. Courtesy of Conde' Nast Publications Ltd.

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of Facade'sperformance text,Paul Driver argues musicologicaldefense prompt us to of pathosand darkness" should thatitsoccasional "moods "modernist classic."23 Of give"a newcomplexion" to this underappreciated inEnglishliterature ofdarkness andblackness do not always course, tropes described Facade's"darkness" inconsistently, denote race.Sitwellherself mean musical tonality, animality, menace, dissonance, usingthe termto in the dark imagery or nothingness (Canticle, pp. xiv-xxv).But surely ourcritical attention. With its poemsdepicting peopleof colordemands "Negro cocktail-shaker," "Black Mrs. Hottentots, "turbaned Chinoiserie," ofBritain's and "Negress" LilyO'Grady,Facade'sfiguration Behemoth," nornonsensical. char neither abstract Moreover,these darkothers proves linked with British Africa and Asia are intricately geopolitics actersfrom a "zenith" ofexpansionism during which, Garrity of the1920s, particularly held territorial (colonies, domin "the British empire possessions explains, on all five aboutone-quarter andprotectorates) continents, covering ions, a population of some400million individuals" of theglobeand comprising of and even subversive aspects While I do notdenythehumorous (p. 14). thecritically ignored imperialist meanings my reading emphasizes Facade, to accounts ofmodernism and race. thatproveSitwell'simportance My inherpoems rebellion furthermore shows how female gender plays analysis acrossraciallines. differently of Facadehas opened with three Since thepublication Walton's score, naval and imperial numbersthatsituateit in the contextof Britain's and "En Famille." The poems in the last power:"Fanfare," "Hornpipe," racial tropes thatoccur twoof thesethreealso establishthe sexualized theexcessive the text, and potentially throughout especially sporadically "Fanfare" and "Hompipe," in theinitial included threatening "shady lady." unit. While now function as a performance privateand public stagings, undermine Britain'simperial their musical allusions majesty,the playful colonialothers even as its"non of "Hompipe" also constructs poetic text theauthority of high culturaltropes," undermines sense-verse imitation a shortinstrumental number, as Dowson puts it (p. 107). In "Fanfare," Walton alludesto theeighteenth-century song"RuleBritannia"ina dia These prominent alto saxophone and trumpet. partscarry between logue and cellomostlytrill. while thepiccolo,clarinet, thecentral melodic lines snaredrum, which segues "Fanfare" ends expectantly with a vibrating other allusionto Britannia. As the into with a rhythmic "Hompipe" loudly navalpomp ofa with the merry romp instruments enter, Walton undercuts At this wordsenterthe sailor's text, pointSitwell's performance perch jig. ing Queen Victoriaatop theoceanwaves:
Sailors come To thedrum

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Out ofBabylon;

Hobby-horses

Foam, thedumb

Skyrhinoceros-glum

Watched the courses of the breakers' rocking-horses and with Glaucis Lady Venus on the settee of thehorsehair sea! Where Lord Tennyson in laurels wrote a gloria free, In a borealic icebergcame Victoria . .. (pp. 8-9)

Like Walton'smusicalallusions toBritannia, Sitwell's recurring imagery of andadmirals bothundercuts and reinforces oceans,sailors, the navalpower and commerce. behind Britishimperial As MichaelNorthnotes, conquest the WashingtonNaval Conferenceof 1922,which dislodged Britain's naval supremacy, and theemergence of the Irish FreeState effected "a in therationale behind theBritish decisiveshift Empireand a new need maritimeimages to enunciate its reasonsforbeing."24 Sitwell'ssurreal and reasserting ofBritishimperial intersect with this questioning power. her fused ofoceanwaves andparlorfumiture For example, image ("settee horsehair boundaries between home and abroad. of the sea") blurs Yet despite itsobvioussatire ofVictoria ruling thewaves, thepoetic maintains of "Hompipe" Britannia's itscentral text bodythrough opposi African island tionbetweenthe"cold" islandseatofEmpireand a "hot" The racialpolarity ofwhite and blackundergirds ofdegenerate colonials. anAfrican man andwoman from asVictoriaobserves this her geography icythrone:
New-arisenMadam Venus for whose sake fromfar Came the fatand zebra'd emperor from Zanzibar Where likegolden bouquets lay far Asia, Africa, Cathay, All laid before that shady ladyby the fibroid Shah.... (pp. 9-10)

As Garrity Britain's'white' "thedistinction between explains, and 'tropi was a keyfeature ofcultural cal' empires bothat home and in imperialism strict racialboundaries thecolonialcontext, and confirming reinforcing whiteprestige and power"(p. 14). In thiscase,Zanzibar doesnot simply in1890, Declared aBritish Protectorate Sitwell withan end rhyme. provide center this between Africaand India remained to major trade important Britain in the earlytwentieth in Zanzibarprovednewsworthy century. wasmade anHonorary Sultan Sitwell's Commander daybecause its Knight forservice month thatFacadewas duringtheGreatWar. In the same in 1922,Zanzibar was invited to join theEastAfrica performed privately House fortheBritish Empire Exhibition.In "Hompipe," Zanzibarfunc ofQueen Victoria's"borealiciceberg," tionsas theantithesis sending up thatare hardly Victorian frigidity while reinforcing African stereotypes Because of itsheterogeneous subversive. populationofAfricans, Arabs, as a hotbedof and Persians, Zanzibarappearedto observers manyBritish 252

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licentiousness. This colonialist perception persisted in the modernist era. Citing an earlier condemnation of the island, a 1913 Timesarticlechar acterized itas a "cesspool ofwickedness" that proves"a fit capitalforthe DarkContinent."25 Thus Sitwell's "fat and zebra'd from Zanzibar" emperor signifies thehedonistic, bestial AfricanofBritain's geopolitical imaginary. He isalso a suitable companion for Facade'sfirst and foremost shadylady. Previous critics havenotnoted that"Hornpipe" figures botha Classical "Lady Venus" (attended Greek sea-god Glaucis) and a grotesque by the "New-arisen Madam Venus" (attendedby Zanzibar'semperor and the equallydubious"fibroid are linkedthrough Shah"). These twogoddesses so thatthe lat images of revelry butdifferentiated through racial markers No "lady," ter becomesa colonialother. Sitwell's Madam Venusdraws dark Victoria's censure. instru heated adoration and men's icy Silencingthe mentsfor nearly four full theentrance of this black measures, Venus seems to threaten thereign ofBritain'simperial initially Queen as herAfrican At thesame andArab courtiers Asia, Africa, lay"far Cathay"at her feet. time,however, Sitwell'sepithets"shady lady," "Madam,"and "minx" connotedubioussexual becomeclearly meaningsthat racedin theculmi snare nating lines. drumroll,an outraged Accompaniedby a prominent hercondemnation of Madam Venus: Queen utters
Queen Victoria sittingshocked upon the rocking-horse Of a wave said to theLaureate, "Thisminx of course Is as sharp as any lynxand blacker-deeperthan the drinksand quite as without remorse!" Hot as any hottentot, For the minx, Said she, "And the drinks, You can see Are hot as anyhottentot and not the goods for me!" (pp. 11-12)

In andof itself word"black" mean "immoral," Sitwell's may simply butone cannot ignorethe specifically African Sitwell meaning of "Hottentot." knewandcited and so CharlesBaudelaire's wouldhavebeen familiar work, withhis impure Noire." She likely Paris knewofJosephine Baker's "Venus thestage name "Black Venus."26 which sometimes performances, employed Madam Venus reflect thecomplexities and Queen Victoriaand Together, ofBritishimperial contradictions discourse. While thefrosty Queen erupts in heated outrage, her "hot" rivalseemscooly unawareof this tirade. Victoriadistances herself the but Hottentot, racially (andmorally)from inSitwell's finalimage of the woman as ties African their emerge imperial rejected "goods." Given thebestialepithet(lynx),allusionsto promiscuity, and racial Hottentot Sitwell's alludesto the markers, disruptive "shadylady"surely as theemblem of Venuswho, as SanderL. Gilman has argued, "served 253

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theentire nineteenth Taken from century."27 Cape black sexuality during Sara Baartman was exhibitedin Town in 1810,Khoi-Khoi tribeswoman andManchester.Her owner Picadilly, Bartholomew Fair,Haymarket, HendrickCezar,would sometimes have Baartmanemergefrom agent, a cage and obey commandslike a tamedbeast. In 1814 Cezar and his for wherehe soldher to an animal trainer. "Hottentot Venus" left Paris, Cuvier andotherscien Baartman was also examined by Georges privately theirtheory that African women'sgenitalia tists, who soughtto confirm providedthemissing linkbetweenhumansand apes.AfterBaartman's Cuvier compared her anatomy to an orangutan's.28 death and dissection, Thus we cannotclaim,asBetteRichartdid in 1959, that Sitwell's ability her "comic invention" as an art Venus with the to"reconcile ape" signals Victorian evenas she from and modernist racialstereotypes ist.29 She draws and gender roles. Victorian mocks prudishness Hottentotsfigured widely in popularcultureof the early twentieth Marie Cahill performed "The century. Broadwayand vaudeville star HottentotLove Song" inher 1906 hitmusical Marrying Mary; the song a climate a Zulumaid: "If a "Hottentot, from hot"who courts features my an' it's all for Rachel Blau skinain't right, you."30 white,I've a heartthat's ofCahill's earlier "Underthe DuPlessishas shownthe influence Bamboo on Broadway Tree"on T. S. Eliot's racialventriloquisms.31 Afterdebuting in 1920, Victor becameaHollywoodfilm thesame Mapes's TheHottentot in as was Aeolian Hall the year Facade's staged London performance;32 play of the the Chenil Galleries 1926. performance, At one level, during year use of the Hottentotfigure more generally) Sitwell's (andAfricans then, herdesiretobemodern. signals critics who consider Sitwell indiscussions of Those few modernism and A decidedly racetendtocitebriefly her 1929volume GoldCoastCustoms. lessplayful textthanFacade, thislongpoem comparesthedecadenceof withAshanti cannibal rites. Britishsociety Gubar positions upper-class towhat she terms "theBoomlayBOOM" poetry Sitwell as a latecomer usheredin byVachel Lindsay in "The Congo" (p. 139). Such poetry "ersatz Africanrhythms with standard Englishlexicons" employs produced hilarity... [and] anarchicincomprehen (p. 139), aswell as "nonsensical withGubar's characterization sibility" (p. 143). Partsof Facade intersect soundat theexpense of sense"(p. 143), of modernist poems"emphasizing nor its musicattempts toperform butneitherits the poems pseudo-African thatprove centralto her analysis. DuPlessismentionsSitwell rhythms andNorth omitsher entirely. And yetSitwellnot only only inpassing, in Facade but also displayed an earlier racialventriloquism performed in African interest Africans(and Clown's Americans) inher 1918volume "Black with theracially Houses. Itspoemsinclude Coffee," charged phrase abouta "negro band."33 and ashot,"and "Minstrels," "blackas anynigger, 254

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Sitwell's contemporary Noel Cowardpicked upon Facade'sracial meanings inhis parody volume, ChelseaBuns.Attributed toHerniaWhittlebot,a Sitwellspoof from his stage show London Calling, Coward'sverseslampoon His "Theme for both her soundplay and her racial tropes. Oboe in E "Dark-round- /Suggestive beadsof sound./ Flat"concludes: Zebubbah zebubbah, while "Misericordia" figures a female speaker /TweetTweet," who would "Beat syncopated passion as a coon."34 In short, racewas a this recognizable aspectofSitwell's early poetry. Reconsidering neglected new understandings ofmodernist artists' work can prompt engagements withAfrica-and othercolonialgeographies-during the latephase of Britishimperialism.

moves toAsia, a part The third numberin Facade'sopeningcluster more closelyconnected with Sitwell's ofBritain's geopoliticalimaginary Set in continues personal senseof style. China, "EnFamille" "Hornpipe's" while satirizing naval imagery and racialtropes British nationaland impe of patriarchal, rialunity. The poem'sconflation national,and colonial more plural between "family" meanings than the fixed yields boundary EnglishandAfrican in "Hompipe," enablingsomedegree ofgendersub on theappearance version. But "EnFamille" ofanother hinges shadylady. Orientalistdistinctions betweenselfand otherare both reinforced and us that can in the Orientalism itself unsettled performance text, reminding and thentroubled, and counterfeited be, inLisa Lowe'swords,"simulated thenironically mocked."35 In "En Famille"Sir Joshua Jebband his daughters at one function, touseEdward Said's its and above all, cultural military, economic, arms," succinct Butwhile thepaternal Admiral seeksto maintain this phrase.36 of wish tosuccumb embrace to itsreputed imperialist China, hisdaughters as the havemislocatedthepoem'ssetting allure. Althoughcritics English the family inChinese tea fields Sitwell clearlyestablishes countryside, (Bohea isa blackChinese tea):
In the early springtime, aftertheirtea, Through the young fieldsof springing Bohea, Jocasta, Dinah, and Deb Jemima, Sir JoshuaJebb Walked with theirfather An admiral red, whose only notion (A butterfly poised on thepigtailed ocean), Is of theperuked seawhose swell Breaks on the flowerless rocksofHell. Deb and Dinah, Under the thin trees, level, as representative Europeans whose empire "contains the Orient in

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Jemima, Jocasta walked, and finer Their black hair seemed (flat-sleekto see) Than theyoung leaves of the springing Bohea; Their cheekswere likenut-meg flowers when swells The rain into foolishsilverbells. (pp. 13-15)

of Asian teaand spicesto markthedaughters' Sitwelluses images first filial was associated transgression. As David Porter points out, teadrinking with in eigh insubordinate femininity and "potentially subversive sexuality" teenth-century England,37 an era withwhichSitwellfelt herself especially attuned. Of courseteadrinking had becomequintessentially Englishby and yet theBohea in "En Famille" imbues the Sitwell'stime, Admiral's As they daughters withChinese attributes. walk through the tea fields, thatofAsian women and their their"flat-sleek" black hair resembles A nutmeg cheeksloseanEnglish pallor, resembling "nutmeg-flowers." tree of also appearsinSitwell's early poem,"TheKing China'sDaughter." This Banda Islands,twoofwhichwere among spice isnative to Indonesia's Britain's earliest colonies.38 As thepoemcontinues, Sitwell's Asian imag to theconstraints marksbothher resistance ofEnglishpropriety ery and her recirculation of Orientalisttropes. a much slowertempothanthefrenetic Walton's scorecalls for pace of and "Hornpipe," melodic flute and legatovioloncello "Fanfare" pairing and percussion. ratherthanbeginning with trumpet This musical shift the languid characterthat not only varies themood but also suggests more generally) theBritish(and Europeans attributed to theChinese. of theEncyclopedia for Accordingto the1911 edition Britannica, example, "the Chinaman's whole philosophy of life him tochangeor to disinclines To theearlytwentieth-century energetic action."39 British,theChinese an odd amalgam ofexoticness, and corruption. seemed passivity, In fact,theEastem decadence thattheEnglish Admiralperceivesin his to on wish most alarming to whom proves Myrrhina, daughters call, their Orientalisttropesin imagining him.These rebellious girlsemploy visit: desired
"We should now stand in the streetofHell Watching siesta shuttersthat fell With a noise like amber softly sliding; Our moon-like glances throughthesegliding Would see at her tablepreened and set Myrrhina sittingat her toilette With eyelids closed as softas the breeze on the incense-trees."(pp. 15-17) That flowsfrom gold flowers

While thename "Myrrhina" may bringtomind theClassicalGreek fig most ure ofAdonis), the Middle Easternvariant proves Myrrha(mother

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of an Assyrianking).40 pertinent here (in whichMyrrhawas daughter isnative to Arabia andAsia. Rather than Moreover,the myrrh treeitself domain world" that Pondromsees in "the submerged psychic Myrrhina's their (p. 212), I find anOrientalistimage ofgold-flowered incensetrees; as "a bacchanalianfantasy ofa opulenceintersects withChina's figuration pleasure garden of thesenses"inearly modem Europe,as Porter notes (p. 12).Walton's orchestration complements Sitwell's Orientalismthrough in thebass diminished fifths itsdrowsy and discordant fluteline,rolled and a continuous wirebrushing of thecymbal. may clarinet Myrrhina part, amore "diffuse thanthe Hottentot Venus's,toborrow represent sensuality" Pamela Hunter'sterm,41 or she may be a prostitute, asLairdargues(p. 88). But she isclearly anAsian shadylady;likethe Hottentot Venus, Myrrhina a "hot"climate and drawsimperial censure. inhabits Sir JoshuaJebbsignifies imperial and patriarchal power throughout "EnFamille"; his name alludesto a British military engineer and surveyor InWalton's score,pizzicatocello and snaredrumpunctu of prisons.42 forexample of theAdmiral'sstiff naval comportment, ate descriptions "Avast"(which means "stop"). Shocked "roaring" thenauticalcommand the will "go to Admiral fears at his daughter's attraction Myrrhina, they theracialboundaries have troubled, native." Hasteningto reinforce they with a racially that he counters their resistance outburst becomes polarized like Walton's score comically Queen Victoria'sin"Hornpipe." overblown, a snaredrumroll to introduce thistirade, which beginsby incorporates failure todisplay table manners and "cross her censuring Myrrhina's proper T's." As the tempo out tumbles the Admiral's fear accelerates, hysterical of the Asian other:
"In short, her scandalous reputation Has shocked thewhole of theHellish nation; And every turbaned Chinoiserie, With whom we should sip our black Bohea, out her simian fingers thin Would stretch To scratchyou,my dears, like a mandoline; ForHell is just as properly proper As Greenwich, or as Bath, or Joppa!" (pp. 18-19)

clos Hell, it seems.In the text's Myrhinna is even too scandalousfor Orientals ("turbaned ingmeasures,theChinese become both stylized menaces ("simian Walton's percussion fingers"). Chinoiserie")and bestial Chinese block duringthis recitation, with a cymbal part incorporates stroke at thewords "scratch you" to emphasizethe perceivedthreat. to tearasunder not only the The daughters' insubordination threatens So much Admiral's own family, but alsonationaland imperial unityitself. upon tea, T's, andEmpire. depends 257

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an "intermittent tobor of meanings," "EnFamille"triggers opening-out row Driver'ssuggestive phrase(p. 5), because itcomesclosestto troubling While boundaries between imperial selfand colonial other in Fagcde. a satirical Admiral isclearly his viewof Myrrhina's thepatriarchal figure, ofhis daughters, to with that whomSitwell Orientaldecadenceintersects "thin" and "soft" appears Moreover, fingers eyelids sympathetic. Myrrhina's ofSitwellherself. These distinctive features would become suggest those innumerous by artists as diverse partof thepoet's iconography portraits and PavelTchelitchew. Sitwell asCecil Beaton,StellaBowen,RogerFry, as it ispossibleto declared in thepressthatshewas "as highlystylised turbans added an and her penchantforrichbrocadesand colorful be,"43 toher look. Sitwell's combination ofsartorial andpoeticchi Oriental flair noiseries complicates therelationship betweenimperialism and subversion inLondon,Sitwellexpressed inFacade.Bywearingturbans her noncon toboth traditional and reigning formity Georgianaesthetics. genderroles Porter notes that the feminine codingand "aesthetictransgressiveness" womengothicnoveliststo fashion from it"gestures of chinoiserie allowed of literary defiance and experimentation" apply (p. 244). These remarks well to Sitwell'searlypoems (especially equally Facade),which accrued exoticism Forexam becauseof their and stylization. Orientalist meanings out "her Orient" aswell as "Primitive Kunitzsingles ple,Stanley Africa,"44 as "her Chinoiserie poems" 9). whileClark refers toFacade (p.

to Facade not only in terms of Empireand raceprove foundational itsperformance of itsperformance sequencebut also in terms history. characters enteredthe thatfeatured Fournew numbers dark-complected were invogue. nascentscoreduring theyears1923-28, whenHottentots "AMan from a FarCountree"and "Fourin the Two of these, Morning," voicemen ofAfricandescent who longfor romance. cross-racial "Black more shady ladies,one Mrs. Behemoth" and "PopularSong" feature a and one ofAfricandescent. Space does not permit racially ambiguous but suffice to saythatthey of these alsocontribute fuller discussion poems, to the"dark side"ofFacade. "AMan from a FarCountree,"Sitwell represents In the slow-tempo threecontrasts cross-racial desire through between"black"and "gold." his as not utters himself "blackand thespeaker first Describing comely," "RoseandAlice,"whosehair is likean elusive"golden for longing palace." in that aman "black lessfixed, The poem'ssecondcontrast provesslightly ofgold that like as thedarkest trees" can acquire wealth ("swarms will fly of tohis colordenieshim the honey-bees"); yethis rootedness mobility as "a thespeaker recodes his blackness hismoney.InSitwell'sfinalimage, 258

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lovely tree"in which "golden birds" will sing(pp.50-51); here thecolors cohabit withoutblending. That these mutationstakeplace in a single sentencefurthers the ambiguous status of race relationsin thispoem. Is Sitwell ultimately resisting or reinforcing African/English dualisms? from black man is Unlike the Emperor Zanzibarin"Hornpipe," this not an animalistic anddecadentfigure. He seems morealong thelines ofan older version of "TheLittleBlack Boy";Sitwell,in fact, (andmore sexualized) echoesBlake's images of trees, lambs, black,and gold.Desiringromantic rather thanplatonic relations withwhites, the speaker's moumful, cul minating"oh!" both addsdramatic poignancy and reinforces stereotypes aboutcross-racial desire. Ifthe"Man from a FarCountree" isrootedinhisblackness, thecentral a kindof racialLimbo,engag figure of "Four in the Morning" inhabits whatDriver terms a "rootless ing in questioning" (p. 6). Because he isa blackcharacter ghost,this can crosstheracial divide topursue his object of desire. Walton's scoreconveys a suitably ghostly mood, opening with pizzicato cello and "chillbass-clarinet tones"(p. 6). Sitwell's openinglines color the inways that main character bothdisplaceand reinscribe social hierarchies:
Cried thenavy-blueghost Of Mr. Belaker The allegronegro cocktail-shaker: "Why did the cock crow, Why am I lost Down the endless road to Infinity toss'd?"(p. 64)

"Navy-blue ghost" depicts both"pure" blackness and a bartender's uniform. andMr. Belaker will The allusionto thecock'scrowconnotes betrayal, white womenofdivergent indeed breach stations. He propriety bydesiring a nursemaid: "As I racedthrough initially pursues the leavesaswhite as water/ overa nurse-maid, her" (p. 65). In a longer My ghostflowed caught inTheCanticle version of the poempublished of the Rose, Sitwellelaborates on text: "White is thenursemaid onwhat ishintedat in theperformance withme unafraid?" theparade./Is she real,as she flirts (p. 37). over"theservant who apparently While Mr. Belaker"flows reciprocates his desire, he can onlypeer inat theSpanishprincess:
Watch the Infanta'sgown of silk In theghost-roomtallwhere thegovemante Whispers slylyfadingandante. In at thewindow then looked he, Mister Belaker, The navy-blueghost of The allegronegro cock-tail shaker, And his flattenedface like themoon saw she, Rhinoceros black yet flowinglike the sea. (pp. 66-67)

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Mr. Belaker "Fourin the Morning" links with the Infanta in three ways. First, her "governante's" somecomplicity sly, fading whisperinsinuates in man'svoyeuristic the black accesstohercharge. mea Second, theensuing on theInfanta's sure ofcastanetin the percussion plays Spanishnationality while also referring back to thecastanets that earlier accompany references Mr. Belaker. to theInfanta's Equallysubtle, reciprocal gazeather admirer's "flowing over"thenursemaid. face" echoeshis "flowing All of thesetropes a mobilitylacking givehis "navy-blue inFacade's ghost" other black men. Mr. Belaker'sfacealsoblurs dualisms because it isboth white/black moon like(white)and "rhinoceros and bestial. Of all Sitwell's black," heavenly to theperformance one proves this most innovative in contributions text, terms ofboth socialconfigurations and sound devices. If critics have ignored the race of Facade's most boisterous women, thosefew who acknowledge the text's blackmen limittheir significance accountsofSitwell's themthrough by reading childhoodat biographical Renishaw Hall. Huntermakes a rather curious connection Mr. between Belaker and HenryMoat, thewhite valetwho served Sitwell'sfather, because his drunkenness "gavehis face thedark ('negro')blue tinge." Hunter does see the "man from a farcountree"in broader terms; he becomesfor her a universal of the"socialoutcast," either "theblack figure or theblack-faced slave on theRenishaw tapestries miner outside the In a on comment "exotic" grounds" Sitwell's (p. 73). passing influences, KevinMcBeath speculates thatshemayhave shared herbrother Osbert's of a wretched ina resort Negro beggar "memory selling flowers" townthe ventures intopopular family frequented (p. 35). StephenLloyd'sanalysis of "theBlack-a-moor" the figure in theStrewelpeter culture, considering stories collection of children's that on her Sitwellnamed as an influence Sitwell's early recent critics have relied poetry (p.31). Generallyspeaking, on psycho-biographical overmuch togloss interpretations herearly poetry. While it is truethat Sitwell's and children's childhood more gen culture intoFacade,focusing on theseaspectssuppresses erallyfigure exclusively both theracial andmodernist bentof their blackface politics minstrelsy. men accruefewer Sitwell's black negative meaningsthantheexcessive womenwho reinscribe dark someof the racial tropes more apparentin the Hottentot Venus and "Black Mrs. Behemoth" and "Popular Myrrhina. who seemto threaten characters whitewomenbutbecome Song" feature in theend.These numbers rather ridiculous return thesceneofFacade to Asia andAfrica. thecolonialgeographies of In "Black Mrs. Behemoth," theracially title enters character ambiguous the textinominousfashion, chords accompanied byaccented,fortissimo moreprominently and snare drum. The trumpet sounds here thanin many of an immense, woman: theheavystomping suggesting numbers, enraged

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In the roomof the palace Black Mrs. Behemoth Gave way towroth And thewildestmalice. (p. 42)

Given thepoem's repeated use of theword "black" in a sequence that of mean opens with the Hottentot Venus,we should engagethenetwork "black" ingsthat extend beyondthedarkness ofheranger. As a descriptor, and with Rudyard intersects with Sitwell'sotherAfrican characters bothracesfigured Kipling'sinfamous GungaDin,who isIndian; heavilyin In addition, British constructions ofcolonialothers. the word"behemoth" connotes a hippopotamus, the network of wild animalsthat Sitwell joining links topeopleofcolor(zebra, monkey, rhinoceros). Mrs.Behemoth's lynx, to lure contrast sheattempts traits with thepale "courtlady" dramatically theblack/white dualismthatstruc intoher "shady" domain, continuing tures much ofFacade:
Cried Mrs. Behemoth, "Come, court lady, Doomed like a moth, Through palace roomsshady!" The candle flame Seemed a yellow pompion, Sharp as a scorpion; Nobody came.... (pp. 42-43)

of threatened continues of whiteness with the analogy Sitwell'ssubtext to the flame. to pianis attraction the moth's fatal Walton'smusic shifts instrumentation whenMrs. Behemothspeaks her three simoand lighter a discordant flute appearance lines, employing partthatrecalls Myrrhina's in"EnFamille." iscontained In theclosinglines, thetitle character's excessive blackness inert toher threat. and rendered whenno one responds The "young spring wind" extinguishes the candle and then Coromandel migratesto "flat for Sitwell'send rhyme /Rolling on!" (p. 43). EchoingEdwardLear,45 a British orEuropeanpalace to thepoem's locationfrom "candle"shifts a colonialdomain-the southeast coast of India.BlackMrs. Behemoth may no longer be a menace, butBritaincertainly feltthreatened byher wars. colonialholdingsin theyears betweenthe As Stephen competitors' British Constantine has noted,the occupation" government's "prevailing was "maintaining, and developing and resources," utilising Empire links "the preservation of imperial controlover India."46 Ghandi's including Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920-22 exacerbatedthese anxieties Yet we must note that aboutAsian Empire. Walton's light, pianissimo an imperial text march to India. suggests endingin the performance hardly 261

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Mrs.Behemoth"relies Rather,"Black mostly on theracialstereotypes sur rounding its central character forits dramatic effects. "Popular Song"presents a shadylady who takes on excessivetrappings ofFacade isa tonally This third-to-last number of whiteness. complex, cau tale with a doubly colonialprotagonist: tionary O'Grady isbothblack Lily andBritish and Irish. Racial stereotypes geopolitics prove important in a its on airs. central for The poem that putting punishes figure performance text of "Popular Song"opens with jazzy instrumentation and a jaunty beat, thereciter's ofSitwell's complementing rapid-fire delivery poem: Lily O'Grady,
Silly and shady, Longing to be A lazy lady, Walked by the cupolas, gables in the Lake's Georgian stables, In a fairy tale like theheat intense, And themist in thewoods when across the fence The childrengatheringstrawberries Are changed by theheat intonegresses . .. (pp. 91-92)

a "fol-de with tucks" and carrying Donning a green(Irish?)satin"gown a dubious Sitwell rol /Parasol," LilyO'Grady performs ladyship. reveals intothepoem thatshe is"aNegressblack as theshade" (pp.93 halfway and range 94), so this character's "depth of meaning"prove more specific "emblem ofmortality" thantheuniversal that Brophysees (p. 145). Lily rather thanher death bywater,generate O'Grady's raceand nationality, thetext's social meanings. English, African,and Irish tropes play offone another in "Popular To heighten bothcomicalanddisturbing effects. her satire, Song,"creating so that Sitwelllocatesthis her shadylady poem in the English countryside thepleasantpastures ofGeorgianpoetry and national iden can disrupt As Garrity has noted, idealized tity. popular images "associated national virtuethat linkedthe countryside with character with ancientpastoral theinterwar Hottentot authentic years(p. 2). Like the Englishness" during intense Venus andMyrrhina, LilyO'Grady generates heat; inher case it blackensthe localEnglishgirlsinto"negresses," thedarkening recalling in "EnFamille." As "Popular of the Admiral's Song" continues, daughters itsslippages blackandwhitedo not proveparallel. between Althoughthe children's skinchangescolor,theyremain and are likened "gold-haired" to ButLily Classical female maintain consistently figures. O'Gradycannot more grotesque than her racialfacade. Proving Classical, she runs"like chasesher intoa lake. when an amorous thenymphs" satyr "dog-haired" in the tobe, remaining thatshedesired She becomesat lastthe"lazylady" the black Irishwoman have should lake's shade." "deep Presumably, stayed 262

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inherplace.The demise ofFacade'sfinal shadylady proves centralto the lighthearted toneof theperformance text, even as thepoem'sculminat ing linesshift from her fallenstate to the fallen Roman empire: "Now Pompey's dead,Homer's read,/ Heliogabalus losthis head" (pp. 92-99). During thetime ofFacade'sinitial performance in1922, the British empire had not fallen butwas definitely starting toshrink; Egypt achieved partial independence, and theIrish FreeStatewas declared.

Facade circulatedin Britishcultureduringa decade that saw the of the EmpireDevelopmentParliamentary Committee establishment Union (1922), the Imperial Economic (1920), theEmpire Development Conference Games (1924), and the (1923), the Empire Empire Marketing a policyof Board (1926). The latter organization, theEMB, promoted theEmpirealive" through imperial preference by "bringing mass pub Thus manywho attendedtheLondon performances of Facade in licity. withEMB posters forthe"Buy 1926 and 1929would have been familiar of theFruits British" campaign, the"Calendar andVegetables ofEmpire," Empirejigsaw puzzles andChristmas cards, and thepopularrecipeforthe of such ingredients as South King'sEmpire Christmas Pudding(comprised Africanraisins and Jamaican One of the EMB's first the1929 rum). films, raised this tounintended feature One Family, bydepicting pudding parody a boy traveling theglobe tofind thenecessary ingredients; Kipling worked on thescript (Constantine, pp. 203, 211, 205,216). Poetry was alsocalled In a 1926 letter maintain the"fayade" ofBritishimperial upon to unity. to theTimes,a representative of theEMB calledupon readers to submit from for "quotations English proseor verse"that mightbe suitable posters and development."47 promoting "Empire trade,traffic, As we have seen, at thesame manyof Sitwell's FacadepoemsparodytheEmpire's efficacy timethatthey theracialstereotypes that maintain it. reinforce helped to I agree withGarritythat"littleattention has been paid tohow British of women modernists and interrogate the legacy identify with, repudiate, in womenpoetsareespecially empire" (p. 13) andwould add that ignored this context. As I see it,two tendencies in literary studies havemade Sitwell long a reassessment overduefor informed aswell as gender. by raceand empire the of would seem to render it immune tohis First, avant-gardismFacade In his close reading of theyear1922, torical and cultural interpretations. Northcritiques "the ofsomething called 'modernism' in intel preservation lectualamber, insulation from the cultural whose purported something world into which itwas introduced isnow retrospectively accomplished consensus" soundedits"noiselike bycritical (p. 11). In 1922,Facadefirst 263

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amber" (p. 16 of the"EnFamille" number), entangling experimental tech niquesand racialformations, witty parodies andcolonialgeographies. New from modernist studies wouldprofit revisiting Sitwelland Walton's perfor wasmischaracterized as beingdivorced mance text.If modernism from the women'spoetry as alwaysresist has beenmisconceived "cultural world," in thecriticalreception ingthedominant culture. This secondfactor of more generally-hasled to theprivileging Facade-and Sitwell ofgender social subversion at theexpenseofnontransgressive meanings, especially in thoseanalyses based on Kristeva'ssemiotic. Sitwell's namemay have withprogressive been "synonymous poetics"in the1920s,asDowson puts it (p. 90), but aswithmale modernists, her stylistic innovations do not In case always guarantee progressive the of Sitwell's politics. shadyladies, critics the factthattheir raceprovesas crucialas feminist have ignored ofBritishcultural their andmore genderto the text's unsettling norms, excessivebehavior. Sitwell'sautobiography crucial thangenderto their meant to laugh" at Faqade,48 insists that"theaudience is but itsrhythmic Thismost infamous doesnot always ofSitwell's laughter provesubversive. in thenew century. on renewed InOxford's texts has taken significance ofBritish editedbyKeith Tuma, four of thefive latest anthology poetry, come from Bernhart's and Kristevan Sitwellselections Phillips's FaKade.49 twoof the three on Sitwell in based analyses comprise essays published contextsin our approaches toFacade, 2002. If we include more cultural no a will be canonical misfit. Sitwell longer
NOTES 1 LeonardWoolf, "The World ofBooks,"The Nation & The Athenaeum, 18 April
in English New Bearings Situation (1932; rpt., Ann Arbor: University 3 De Witt Gerald Sanders, John Herbert Chief Modern 4 Richard Poets Ellman of Britain and America, and Robert O'Clair, 1925, p. 76. 2 F. R. Leavis, Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary of Michigan Press, 1960), p. 73. Nelson, and M. L. Rosenthal, 5th ed. eds., 1, Poets of Britain, (New York: of Modern

vol.

Macmillan, 1970).
eds., The Norton Anthology 1988), pp. 449, 450. Poetry, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 5 Fleur Adcock, ed., The F aber Book of Twentieth Scott, Faber, 1987), p. 8; Diana ed., Bread (London: of Nineteenthand Twentieth-Century N. Pondrom, Sitwell Poetry or byWomen

Century Women's Poetry and Roses: An Anthology Writers (London: Virago,

1982).
Cyrena Connection 6 "Influence? of Edith with Gertrude The Intertextuality? Complicated in Influence and Intertextuality of and Eric Rothstein (Madison: University Stein," Jane Dowson, Women, Modernism and

in Literary History, ed. Jay Clayton Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 204-18,

British (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2002), p. 96; Femininity Poetry, 1910-1939: Resisting

211-12;

264

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Making and (Postmodern)Remaking Holly Laird, "LaughterandNonsense in the ofModernism," inThe Future of Modernism, ed. Hugh Witemeyer (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1997), p. 80; Gyllian Phillips, '"SomethingLies Beyond the Scene [Seen]' of Fa?ade: Sitwell,Walton and Kristeva's Semiotic," inLiterature andMusical Adaptation, ed. Michael J. Meyer (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2002), cally 7 pp. 61-78. in the text. Stanford (Princeton: Subsequent Friedman, Princeton references to these works and 1998), will be cited parentheti of

Susan

Mappings: University

Feminism Press,

theCultural p. 18.

Geographies

Encounter

Women Modernists and the JaneGarrity, Step-Daughters of England: British

Manchester Press, (Manchester: University Imaginary in the text. references will be cited parenthetically 2003), pp. 2-3.

National Subsequent

9 Edith Sitwell, Fa?ade (London: Favil Press, 1922). 10 Sitwell andWilliam Walton, Fa?ade: An Entertainment (London: Oxford

references to the Fa?ade poems are to this edi Press, 1951). Subsequent University in the text. tion and will be cited parenthetically 11 dir. and Sitwell, Books 1 and 11, by Walton reciter, Fa?ade, Lynn Redgrave, Center, cond. Arabesque Recordings, Z6699,1997; Pamela Hunter, Discover reciter, Something Lies International, DICD

David Shifrin,cond. JosephSilverstein,The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Walton and Sitwell, Scene: Fa?ade, The CompleteVersion, 1922-1928, by Beyond the
Silveer van der Broeck, Melologos Ensemble,

920125, 1993. 12 Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell:A Unicorn Among Lions (New York: AlfredA. Knopf, 1981), p. 72. 13 Blake Morrison, "Queen Edith: On Edith Sitwell," Encounter, 57, No. 5 (1981), 92.
14 Marnie Parsons,

University ofToronto Press, 1994), pp. 149, 150. CenturyPoetry (Toronto: 15 The Rose (NewYork:Vanguard, 1949), p. xii. Subsequent Canticle Sitwell, of the
references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically 16 in 'Lullaby and Beyond Walter Bernhart, "Iconicity in Form Miming Meaning: Functions of Poetic Rhythm," in the text. for Jumbo': Semiotic Iconicity in Language

Touch Monkeys:

Nonsense

Strategies

for Reading

Twentieth

Fischer ed. Max and Olga (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Nanny references will be cited parenthetically 1999), pp. 162, 159; subsequent Publishing, in the text. 17 ed. Kelly Oliver (New York: Columbia Julia Kristeva, The Portable Kristeva, references will be cited paren Press, 1997), pp. 104, 34. Subsequent University in the text. thetically and Literature,

18 Gary Day andGina Wisker, "Recuperatingand Revaluing: Edith Sitwell and ed. Day and Brian Charlotte Mew," inBritish Poetry, 1900-50:Aspects ofTradition,
1995), pp. 68-69, (New York: St. Martins, Docherty in the text. be cited parenthetically 19 alternate title for "Long Steel Grass" The Trombone." 66. Subsequent is "Trio for Two references will Cats and a

20 Acton qtd. in Stephen Lloyd,William Walton: Muse of Fire (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2001), p. 40; subsequent referencesto Lloyd will be cited

265

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22 and the Arts of the1920s and 1930s (Austin: Sarah Bradfordet al.,The Sitwells University ofTexas Press, 1996), pp. 92, 95, 79.Gino Severini's design forthe 1928 his frontispieceto the 1922 book publication of Fa?ade. JohnPiper's design forthe
1942 performance depicts in the center. 23 "On Kenneth Clark, a dreamy landscape with of Miss a ghostly, white-bearded Sitwell's Later mask performance incorporated figures from the commedia dell-arte, which also appear in

in the text. parenthetically 21 Susan Gubar, Racechanges: White York: Oxford University Press, 1997), in the text. cited parenthetically

Skin, Black pp. 139-40;

Face

inAmerican

Culture

(New will be

subsequent

references

Writers and TheirWork, No. 16,No. 90 (1947), 9; JohnLehmann, Edith Sitwell, D. Brophy,Edith Sitwell:The 25, rev. ed. (London: Longman, 1970), p. 17; James Order (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Symbolist University Press, 1968), p. 121; and
Paul ences Driver,

the Development

Style," Horizon

24 Scene of the Modern (New York: Michael North, Reading 1922:A Return to the 25 See "The Control of Zanzibar,"The Times, 1 July1913, p. 7e. 26 See Cheryl A. Wall, Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana
and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, exhibitions Race, and Press, University in the text. 1999), p. 7. Subsequent references will be cited paren

133-34 Revisited," Tempo, "'Fa?ade' to these works will be cited parenthetically

6-7. (1980), in the text.

Subsequent

refer

Oxford

thetically

Madness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 112.

28 Gilman, see the news the British p. 112. For more "Bring Back information on Baartman's article the Hottentot

Press, 1995), p. 105. University 27 Sander L. Gilman, Difference

in London,

15 June 1995.

For a comprehensive press and music hall,

Venus," Weekly Mail & Guardian, account of her life, including her influence on see the documentary film, The Life and Times of 27 February 1959, p.

Sara Baartman: The Hottentot Venus, dir. Zola Maseko, 1998. 29 Bette Richart, "Dame Edith's Art," The Commonweal, 566. 30 Benjamin

Song'" 31

American Poetry, 1908-1934 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp.

103-04. remade

"Marie Cahill's 'Hottentot Love Burt and Silvio Hein, Hapgood Stern and Co., (New York: Joseph W 1906), p. 5. in Modern Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Religious Cultures Genders, Races,

32 was made intoa filmtitled The Hottentot Hottentot in 1923 and 1929 and was
again as Polo Joe in 1936. The most famous coaxes

featured Louis Armstrong title "Black 34 Noel Coffee" Coward,

33 Sitwell,Clowns Houses (Oxford:Blackwell, 1918), pp. 8, 20. Sitwell drew the

from one Chelsea of Aubrey Buns, Beardsley's drawings. to Hernia attributed Whittlebot and British Orientalisms (London: Cornell

as the groom who

remake, Going Places a racehorse to victory.

(1938),

Hutchinson and Co., 1924), pp. 44, 37. 35 Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French University Press, 1991), p. 9.

(Ithaca:

36Edward Said, Orientalism (New York:Vintage, 1978), p. 156. 37David Porter, Ideographia:The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe

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(Stanford:

Stanford

be cited parenthetically

JohnSeabrook, "LetterfromIndonesia: Soldiers and Spice," The New Yorker, 13Aug. 2001, p. 60.
39

38

Press, University in the text.

2001),

pp.

193-95;

subsequent

references will

Tripp, Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology, formerlytitled Crowell'sHandbook ofClassicalMythology (New York:Meridian, 1970), p. 156.
41 Pamela Hunter, introduction and commentary,

40Edward

See

the online

site for the 1911

edition,

<http://29.1911encyclopedia.org>.

Duckworth, 1987), p. 73. 42 See Kevin McBeath, uFa?ade 'ANoise like WilliamWalton: Music Amber,'" in
and Literature, references will

Fa?ade,

by Sitwell

(London:

43 Sitwell, qtd. inElizabeth Salter andAllanan Harper, eds.,EdithSitwell:Fire of the Mind (New York:Vanguard, 1976), p. 107.
44 Stanley Kunitz, "From Queen Anne to the Jungle," review of The Collected

ed. Stuart R. Craggs (Aldershot: Ashgate, in the text. be cited parenthetically

1999),

p. 47;

subsequent

Poems ofEdithSitwell, 37,No. 6 (1931), 341. Poetry, 45See Edward Lear's poem "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?," inA
Nonsense ed. Carolyn Wells (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1902), pp. Anthology, 100-03. 46 the Empire Alive': the Empire Marketing Constantine, '"Bringing Stephen in Imperialism and Popular Culture, Board and Imperial Propaganda," ed. John M.

Mackenzie

L. S. Amery cited Blake's "Thou hast a lap fullof seed, / And this posterdesigners, isa finecountry, And live in it / Why dost thounot cast thyseed, / merrily?" 48 Sitwell, Taken Care Of: The Autobiographyof Edith Sitwell (New York: Atheneum, 1965), p. 139. 49 Modern British and Irish Keith Tuma, ed.,The OxfordAnthology of Poetry (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

Manchester Press, 1986), p. 192; subsequent (Manchester: University in the text. references will be cited parenthetically 47 in The "Posters for Imperial Trade," This the header letter, with appeared Times on 3 November of poetry that inspires 1926, p. 13, col. E. As an example

267

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