Jansy Mello: Trying to make distinctions better to
understand where to Kinbote is leading
us (...where?):
Shade writes about
Dr.Sutton in line 119. He is not the one mentioned on line 986,
but the one who "lives higher up on the same wooded hill...an old
clapboard house" (south from Shade's and
Goldsworth's homes, it seems) and who was the doctor who follows Hazel Shade's
poltergeist and haunted barn episodes. Kinbote mentions him in his note to line
119* and in the notes to lines 230 and 347. There's no indication that they
live in the same house but CK affirms that one is "old-fashioned" (learned,
sagacious) and that the other is "ancient" (he must be 84).
1. line 230 (a domestic
ghost): "My poor friend could not help
recalling the dramatic fits of his early boyhood and wondering if this was not a
new genetic variant of the same theme, preserved through procreation. Trying to
hide from neighbors these horrible and humiliating phenomena was not the least
of Shade’s worries. He was terrified, and he was lacerated with pity. Although
never able to corner her, that flabby, feeble, clumsy and solemn girl, who
seemed more interested than frightened, he and Sybil never doubted that in some
extraordinary way she was the agent of the disturbance which they saw as
representing (I now quote Jane P.) "an outward extension or expulsion of
insanity." They could not do much about it, partly because they disliked modern
voodoo-psychiatry, but mainly because they were afraid of Hazel, and afraid to
hurt her. They had however a secret interview with old-fashioned and learned
Dr. Sutton, and this put them in better spirits.[ ] The
phenomena ceased completely and were, if not forgotten, at least never referred
to; but how curious it is that we do not perceive a mysterious sign of equation
between the Hercules springing forth from a neurotic child’s weak frame and the
boisterous ghost of Aunt Maud; how curious that our rationality feels satisfied
when we plump for the first explanation, though, actually, the scientific and
the supernatural, the miracle of the muscle and the miracle of the mind, are
both inexplicable as are all the ways of Our Lord." For Kinbote, Hazel's insanity arises under the
influence of Aunt Maud's ghost.
2. line 347 (old
barn) "But to return to Hazel Shade. She decided she wanted to
investigate the "phenomena" herself for a paper [ ] Her parents
permitted her to make a nocturnal visit to the barn only under the condition
that Jane P. — deemed a pillar of reliability — accompany her. [ ] a few
days later asked Jane to come with her again, but Jane could not. [ ]and
after a row with her parents took her bull’s-eye and notebook and set off alone.
One can well imagine how the Shades dreaded a recrudescence of the poltergeist
nuisance but the ever-sagacious Dr. Sutton affirmed — on what authority I
cannot tell — that cases in which the same person was again involved in the same
type of outbreaks after a lapse of six years were practically
unknown."
The other Sutton had a daughter and is
mentioned by Kinbote noting on lines 181 and 1000
1. CK note to line
181: "I heard the first guest’s car. Oh, I saw them all. I saw
ancient Dr. Sutton, a snowy-headed, perfectly oval little gentleman arrive in a
tottering Ford with his tall daughter, Mrs. Starr, a war widow..."
2. CK note 1000:
"...and then there was the awful moment when Dr. Sutton’s daughter drove
up with Sybil Shade. In the course of that chaotic night I found a moment to
transfer the poem ..."
..............................................................................
* CK note to line
119: "This is a recombination of letters taken from two names,
one beginning in "Sut," the other ending in
"ton." Two distinguished medical men, long retired from practice, dwelt on our
hill. Both were very old friends of the Shades; one had a daughter, president of
Sybil’s club — and this is the Dr. Sutton I visualize in my notes to lines 181
and 1000. He is also mentioned in Line 986. " I
doubt that Shade had two different doctors in mind when he mentioned them in his
poem. Kinbote must have split them in two for a mysterious reason.
John Shade's lines with the two distinct
Suttons (according to CK):
1." That’s Dr. Sutton’s light. That’s
the Great Bear." (he is consulted as some sort
of Hazel's psychiatric observer, or a GP)
2. "But it’s not bedtime yet. The sun
attains/Old Dr. Sutton’s last two windowpanes./The man must be — what? Eighty?
Eighty-two?/Was twice my age the year I married you." (he is the father of
Mrs.Starr)