Hello, Walter Miale and List
While commenting on "over-reading" you
said best authors are the lucky ones. "Best readers", though, must
be harder to find, specially when reading "best authors".
I wonder if you can help me with one
kind of decyphering. See, I'm puzzled with certain "golf games" or
anagrammatical plays which I recently came accross. We know that Kinbote claims he has certain affinities with
Hazel Shade, who inverts words ( diapers? Toilest?) . He also compares
30-year old Queen Disa with a younger Sybil ( both associated to
"Vanessa"). Vanessa takes us to
the relationship bt. Jonathan Swift (JS) and Stella, I mean, Esther
- whom he named "Vanessa". This love-affair is described in K's
comments to "my dark Vanessa" but it was not directly mentioned in the
Index.
An article in the internet describes
how Swift was torn between to Esthers as a result of "his dual
nature" ( Esther Johnson and Esther Vanhomrigh, his "Vanessa"). In his
correspondence to her he uses "little talk" or "baby talk" and a few
examples of this were quoted.
"When they were separated for any length
of time Swift wrote to Stella in a sort of baby-talk, which they called
“the little language.” It was made up of curious abbreviations and
childish words, growing more and more complicated as the years went on
(...) Pedantic writers have professed to find in Swift’s use of this
“little language" the coming shadow of that insanity which struck him
down in his old age. As it is, these letters are among the curiosities
of amatory correspondence. When Swift writes “oo” for “you,” and
“deelest" for “dearest,” and “vely” for “very,” there is no need of an
interpreter; but “rettle” for “let ter,” “dallars” for “girls," and
“givar” for “devil,” are at first rather difficult to guess. Then there
is a system of abbreviating. “Md” means “my dear," "Ppt” means
“poppet,” and “Pdfr,” with which Swift sometimes signed his epistles,
'poor, dear, foolish rogue.' ”
I was interested in "rettle" for
"letter", "dallars" for "girls", "givar" for "devil" but, although the
esssayist wrote that these were "at first rather difficult to guess", I
was unable to guess even after several attempts.
It would be important to discover how
the "exchange of rettles" functioned so that we might discover more about Hazel/Kinbote - and their
"little language". Can you ( or any good soul in the List) explain it
to me?
Jansy