Jealousy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  I am not proud of these thoughts, for they betray the envy that every failure feels for every success; but spite may often see as clearly as charity. And indeed, running as it were upon a parallel track in my mind went the words which Clea once used about him and which, for some reason, I remembered and reflected upon: ‘He is unlovely somewhere. Part of the secret is his physical ungainliness. Being wizened his talent has a germ of shyness in it. Shyness has laws: you can only give yourself, tragically, to those who least understand. For to understand one would be to admit pity for one’s frailty. Hence the women he loves, the letters he writes to the women he loves, stand as ciphers in his mind for the women he thinks he wants, or at any rate deserves — cher ami.’ Clea’s sentences always broke in half and ended in that magical smile of tenderness — ‘am I my brother’s keeper?’ … (What I most need to do is to record experiences, not in the order in which they took place — for that is history — but in the order in which they first became significant for me.) What, then, could have been his motive in leaving me five hundred pounds with the sole stipulation that I should spend them with Melissa? I thought perhaps that he may have loved her himself but after deep reflection I have come to the conclusion that he loved, not her, but my love for her. Of all my qualities he envied me only my capacity to respond warmly to endearments whose value he recognized, perhaps even desired, but from which he would be forever barred by self-disgust. Indeed this itself was a blow to my pride for I would have liked him to admire — if not the work I have done — at least the promise it shows of what I have yet to do. How stupid, how limited we are — mere vanities on legs! We had not met for weeks, for we did not habitually frequent each other, and when we did it was in the little tin pissotière in the main square by the tram-station. It was after dark and we would never have recognized each other had not the head-lights of a car occasionally drenched the foetid cubicle in white light like spray. ‘Ah!’ he said in recognition: unsteadily, thoughtfully, for he was drunk. (Some time, weeks before, he had left me five hundred pounds; in a sense he had summed me up, judged me — though that judgement was only to reach me from the other side of the grave.)

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  And when next they met, under very different circumstances … But I have not the courage to continue. I have explored Melissa deeply enough through my own mind and heart and cannot bear to recall what Nessim found in her — pages covered with erasures and emendations. Pages which I have torn from my diaries and destroyed. Sexual jealousy is the most curious of animals and can take up a lodgement anywhere, even in memory. I avert my face from the thought of Nessim’s shy kisses, of Melissa’s kisses which selected in Nessim only the nearest mouth to mine.… From a crisp packet I selected a strip of pasteboard on which, after so many shame-faced importunities, I had persuaded a local jobbing printer to place my name and address, and taking up my pen wrote: mr — — — — — accepts with pleasure the kind invitation of mr — — — — — to a duck shoot on Lake Mareotis. It seemed to me that now one might learn some important truths about human behaviour. * * * * * Autumn has settled at last into the clear winterset. High seas flogging the blank panels of stone along the Corniche. The migrants multiplying on the shallow reaches of Mareotis. Waters moving from gold to grey, the pigmentation of winter. The parties assemble at Nessim’s house towards twilight — a prodigious collection of cars and shooting-brakes. Here begins the long packing and unpacking of wicker baskets and gun-bags, conducted to the accompaniment of cocktails and sandwiches. Costumes burgeon. Comparison of guns and cartridges, conversation inseparable from a shooter’s life, begin now, rambling, inconsequent, wise. The yellowish moonless dusk settles: the angle of the sunlight turns slowly upwards into the vitreous lilac of the evening sky. It is brisk weather, clear as waterglass. Justine and I are moving through the spiderweb of our preoccupations like people already parted. She wears the familiar velveteen costume — the coat with its deeply cut and slanted pockets: and the soft velours hat pulled down over her brows — a schoolgirl’s hat: leather jack-boots. We do not look directly at each other any more, but talk with a hollow impersonality. I have a splitting headache. She has urged upon me her own spare gun — a beautiful stout twelve by Purdey, ideal for such an unpractised hand and eye as mine.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  It subsequently became completely imperative for me to distinguish myself from her in my own mind. A-Man had told me that she’d had affairs with married men in the past; I decided that she must have a history of playing second fiddle to other women. Whereas I, on the other hand, am always lead masochist, head girl, first-best, or I don’t play. Period. I also became inordinately, insanely fixated on the size of her ass. It was, after all, twice mine, if not more . . . maybe two and half times mine . . . If A-Man so loved my tight ass, how could he love that wide one, too? Then, a few weeks later, we all had the misfortune to overlap at the gym. Having finished my own exercise routine, I was leaving through the check-in area and there they both were, sitting on the couch: she was scowling, and he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else. What had happened to the sex god who strode about my bedroom with the killer erection? This man pulled his legs under him on the couch and stared at his knees, barely breathing. I breezed through on my way out the door, saying a bright hello to both. What else could I do? And while I didn’t expect her to respond, I was, I realize, testing him. And he failed me. Silence. No acknowledgment of me in front of her. Outside, devastated, I burst into tears. I needed something from him and I wasn’t getting it. And I wasn’t going to get it. Assurance. But of course—and this was the catch-22 that lay at the core of our whole affair—had he given me the assurance I so desperately needed, of my place in his hierarchy and his heart, the fire between us would most likely have been extinguished. It was always just the right balance of that element of not being sure that kept me so in love, so full of desire, so very excited about him. He had never bent to my will, and that wasn’t going to change now. He had always shown me his love; but he wouldn’t confirm it on demand. It was clear to me that A-Man was going to do nothing to resolve this problem. So I had to do something. I got this idea in my head to discuss with the mousy brunette, in a girlie kind of way, the problem, our problem: him. This woman’s agony was now threatening the safety of my world with A-Man, and perhaps if we talked, she and I could work something out. Besides, it wasn’t just her pain anymore; it was also mine. The story was becoming about her and me, with A-Man watching from the sidelines. Was this some unresolved Electra thing? Maybe, but I had no time to think about mythology right now. This was war. And, with her, I had no intention of surrendering.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I made my way first to the lavatory, then headed downstairs to the change-room. This had been opened tonight only so that the ladies should have a place to hang their coats, and it was cold and empty and rather dim; but it had a looking-glass: and it was to this that I now stepped, squinting and tugging at my dress to pull it straight.I had been there for no longer than a minute when there came the sound of footsteps in the passageway beyond, and then a silence. I turned my head to see who was there, and found that it was Kitty. She had her shoulder against the doorframe and her arms folded. She wasn’t standing as one normally stands - as she usually stood - in an evening gown. She was standing as she did when she was on stage, with her trousers on - rather cockily. Her face was turned towards me and I couldn’t see her rope of hair, or the swell of her breasts. Her cheeks were very pale; there was a stain upon her skirt where some champagne had dripped upon it from an over-spilling glass.‘Wot cheer, Kitty,’ I said. But she did not return my smile, only watched me, levelly. I looked uncertainly back to the glass, and continued working at my sash. When she spoke at last, I knew at once that she was rather drunk.‘Seen something you fancy?’ she said. I turned to her again in surprise, and she took a step into the room.‘What?’‘I said, “Seen something you fancy, Nancy?” Everybody else here tonight seems to have. Seems to have seen something that has rather caught their eye.’I swallowed, unsure of what reply to make to her. She walked closer, then stopped a few paces from me, and continued to fix me with the same even, arrogant gaze.‘You were very fresh with that horn-player, weren’t you?’ she said then.I blinked. ‘We were just having a bit of a lark.’‘A bit of a lark? His hands were all over you.’‘Oh Kitty, they weren’t!’ My voice almost trembled. It was horrible to see her so savage; I don’t believe that, in all the weeks that we had spent together, she had ever so much as raised her voice to me in impatience.‘Yes they were,’ she said. ‘I was watching - me and half the party. You know what they’ll be calling you soon, don’t you?’ “Miss Flirt”.’Miss Flirt! Now I didn’t know whether to cry or to laugh.‘How can you say such a thing?’

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  ‘But here too I was sufficiently detached to observe how much love feeds upon jealousy, for as a woman out of my reach yet in my arms, she became ten times more desirable, more necessary. It was a heartbreaking predicament for a man who had no intention of falling in love, and for a woman who only wished to be delivered of an obsession and set free to love. From this something else followed: if I could break the Check I could possess her truly, as no man had possessed her. I could step into the place of the shadow and receive her kisses truly; now they fell upon a corpse. It seemed to me that I understood everything now. ‘This explains the grand tour we took, hand in hand so to speak, in order to overcome this succubus together with help of science. Together we visited the book-lined cell of Czechnia, where the famous mandarin of psychology sat, gloating pallidly over his specimens. Basle, Zurich, Baden, Paris — the flickering of steel rails over the arterial systems of Europe’s body: steel ganglia meeting and dividing away across mountains and valleys. Confronting one’s face in the pimpled mirrors of the Orient Express. We carried her disease backwards and forwards over Europe like a baby in a cradle until I began to despair, and even to imagine that perhaps Justine did not wish to be cured of it. For to the involuntary check of the psyche she added another — of the will. Why this should be I cannot understand; but she would tell no one his name, the shadow’s name. A name which by now could mean everything or nothing to her. After all, somewhere in the world he must be now, his hair thinning and greying from business worries or excesses, wearing a black patch over one eye as he did always after an attack of ophthalmia. (If I can describe him to you it is because once I actually saw him.) “Why should I tell people his name?” Justine used to cry. “He is nothing to me now — has never been. He has completely forgotten these incidents. Don’t you see he is dead? When I see him.…” This was like being stung by a serpent. “So you do see him?” She immediately withdrew to a safer position. “Every few years, passing in the street. We just nod.” ‘So this creature, this pattern of ordinariness, was still breathing, still alive! How fantastic and ignoble jealousy is. But jealousy for a figment of a lover’s imagination borders on the ludicrous.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She had been nervous, as all performers are, and her nervousness had infected me; but when she stepped into the wing at the end of her final number, pursued by stamping, by shouts and ‘Hurrahs!’, she was flushed and gay and triumphant. To tell the truth, I did not quite like her then. She seized my arm, but didn’t see me. She was like a woman in the grip of a drug, or in the first flush of an embrace, and I felt a fool to be at her side, so still and sober, and jealous of the crowd that was her lover.After that, I passed the twenty minutes or so that she was gone each night alone, in her room, listening to the beat of her songs through the ceiling and walls, happier to hear the cheers of the audience from a distance. I would make tea for her - she liked it brewed in the pan with condensed milk, dark as a walnut and thick as syrup; I knew by the changing tempos of her set just when to set the kettle on the hearth, so the cup would be ready for her return. While the tea simmered I would wipe her little table, and empty her ashtrays, and dust down the glass; I would tidy the cracked and faded old cigar-box in which she kept her sticks of grease-paint. They were acts of love, these humble little ministrations, and of pleasure - even, perhaps, of a kind of self-pleasure, for it made me feel strange and hot and almost shameful to perform them. While she was being ravished by the admiration of the crowd, I would pace her dressing-room and gaze at her possessions, or caress them, or almost caress them - holding my fingers an inch away from them, as if they had an aura, as well as a surface, that might be stroked. I loved everything that she left behind her - her petticoats and her perfumes, and the pearls that she clipped to the lobes of her ears; but also the hairs on her combs, the eyelashes that clung to her sticks of spit-black, even the dent of her fingers and lips on her cigarette-ends. The world, to me, seemed utterly transformed since Kitty Butler had stepped into it. It had been ordinary before she came; now it was full of queer electric spaces, that she left ringing with music or glowing with light.By the time she returned to her dressing-room I would have everything tidy and still. Her tea, as I have said, would be ready; sometimes, too, I would have a cigarette lit for her.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  ‘She had of course many secrets being a true child of the Mouseion, and I had to guard myself desperately against jealousy or the desire to intrude upon the hidden side of her life. I was almost successful in this and if I spied upon her it was really from curiosity to know what she might be doing or thinking when she was not with me. There was, for example, a woman of the town whom she visited frequently, and whose influence on her was profound enough to make me suspect an illicit relationship; there was also a man to whom she wrote long letters, though as far as I could see he lived in the city. Perhaps he was bedridden? I made inquiries, but my spies always brought me back uninteresting information. The woman was a fortune-teller, elderly, a widow. The man to whom she wrote — her pen shrilling across the cheap notepaper — turned out to be a doctor who held a small part-time post on a local consulate. He was not bedridden; but he was a homosexual, and dabbled in hermetic philosophy which is now so much in vogue. Once she left a particularly clear impression on my blotting-pad and in the mirror (the mirror again!) I was able to read: — “my life there is a sort of Unhealed Place as you call it which I try to keep full of people, accidents, diseases, anything that comes to hand. You are right when you say it is an apology for better living, wiser living. But while I respect your disciplines and your knowledge I feel that if I am ever going to come to terms with myself I must work through the dross in my own character and burn it up. Anyone could solve my problem artificially by placing it in the lap of a priest. We Alexandrians have more pride than that — and more respect for religion. It would not be fair to God, my dear sir, and whoever else I fail (I see you smile) I am determined not to fail Him whoever He is.”

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Sitting there at his side, feeling our pulses ticking in unison and listening to him as he talked of my lover with a new magistral calm I could not help but see how much there was in the man which Melissa might have found to love. By what strange chance had she missed the real person? For far from being an object of contempt (as I had always taken him to be) he seemed to be now a dangerous rival whose powers I had been unaware of; and I was visited by a thought so ignoble that I am ashamed to write it down. I felt glad that Melissa had not come to see him die lest seeing him, as I saw him now, she might at a blow rediscover him. And by one of those paradoxes in which love delights I found myself more jealous of him in his dying than I had ever been during his life. These were horrible thoughts for one who had been so long a patient and attentive student of love, but I recognized once more in them the austere mindless primitive face of Aphrodite. In a sense I recognized in him, in the very resonance of his voice when he spoke her name, a maturity which I lacked; for he had surmounted his love for her without damaging or hurting it, and allowed it to mature as all love should into a consuming and depersonalized friendship. So far from fearing to die, and importuning her for comfort, he wished only to offer her, from the inexhaustible treasury of his dying, a last gift. The magnificent sable lay across a chair at the end of the bed wrapped in tissue paper; I could see at a glance that it was not the sort of gift for Melissa, for it would throw her scant and shabby wardrobe into confusion, outshining everything. ‘I was always worried about money’ he said felicitously ‘while I was alive. But when you are dying you suddenly find yourself in funds.’ He was able for the first time in his life to be almost light-hearted. Only the sickness was there like some patient and cruel monitor.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Loving Others, in Sickness and in Health WHAT IS RICH? ARE YOU RICH ENOUGH TO HELP ANYBODY? —Ralph Waldo Emerson Love, in its old-school version, seems to love similarity. Study upon study bears this out. People are most drawn to others who share roughly their same level of physical attractiveness, their same degree of financial wealth, their same physical abilities, their same lot in life. Each person, then, tends to have a small, circumscribed set of “loved ones” whose beauty, wealth, health, and ability are not too different from their own. Your attraction to similar others seems to keep the playing field level. Yet attraction like this also stratifies. Seeking similarity in your companions invites endless social comparisons as you continually size people up, judging whether they’re worse off or better off than you. When you judge others as having it worse than you, you may even feel relief at your own relative good fortune. Or maybe you feel some form of aversion: pity for their plight, fear that their unfortunate lot in life may one day be your own, or unspoken anger at them for bringing their misfortune on themselves. Regardless of which emotions emerge as you look down on others, the distinctions you’ve already made between you and them—and the judgments that go with it—create a gulf between you, a gulf that erodes your potential for authentic love. A similar gulf forms when you judge others as better off than you. When you see others as having more than you—more beauty, more wealth, more happiness—you come to see yourself as relatively disadvantaged. This can stoke fires of envy, or of self-pity. In looking up to others in this comparative way you stratify your social world into haves and have-nots. Most poignantly, though, you limit your own opportunities to experience the healing powers of positivity resonance. For some people—and you may be one of them—social comparisons like this happen constantly. When encountering someone new, without a moment’s thought, you size him or her up, placing the person on a rung above or below you. Although this habit may seem innocuous, it fuels an often imperceptible greed that constricts love’s radius. Greed thrives on the illusion that good fortune is a scarce commodity, that another’s gain is your loss, and vice versa. It leads to a guarded stance toward others that creates and reinforces distance. Greed makes you cling tightly to your own good outcomes, fearing anything that might make you lose a foothold on the rung on which you find yourself. You look down at those below you with pity, fear, or irritation, and up at those above you with envy or desperation. You grab at opportunities to get more “goods” for yourself, with little regard for whom you may be pushing aside or harming along the way. Through the mere act of ranking others, greed slithers in to create a false social topography that utterly denies the inherent sameness and oneness across all people.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  She smiles and adds, “Do you know that I have always been her secrets keeper?” In high school Isabella spent most days and nights at Naomi’s house. Once in a while she told her mother that she was at Naomi’s but instead stayed over at her boyfriend Sam’s. Naomi was happy to be Isabella’s alibi. After all, Isabella was not only her best friend but one of the most popular girls in their grade. She was the student council representative, she was on the volleyball team, she sang and played guitar in the school’s band, she knew how to put on makeup before anyone else did, and she was the one the boys loved the most. Sam was Isabella’s first boyfriend. They were in tenth grade when Isabella shared with Naomi that she was in love with Sam, a popular boy and the captain of the varsity basketball team. When they kissed for the first time, Isabella ran to Naomi’s house to tell her, and a few days later she showed Naomi the note Sam wrote her. I can’t stop thinking of you. He signed it with a heart, and they were both excited. Isabella and Sam were a couple for a few years. He was the first guy she had sex with, and she shared that secret with Naomi, her best friend. When they graduated high school, Isabella and Sam broke up and went to different colleges. When they were in their twenties, Isabella had one boyfriend after another, passionate love affairs, which Naomi followed, always a little jealous and feeling slightly betrayed when Isabella prioritized her boyfriends over Naomi. She wanted to be loved the way Isabella was, but instead—as in her relationship with her mother—she was a witness to someone else’s love. One day, when she was in her twenties, Naomi ran into Sam on the street. She called Isabella right away to tell her about it. She asked her if she would give her permission to go out with Sam. Isabella didn’t mind. She was in love with another guy; she gave Naomi her blessing. A few years later, Isabella was a bridesmaid in Naomi and Sam’s wedding. Now, in her late thirties, Naomi looks back and tries to understand why she isn’t happy. I listen as she begins to unpack her relationship with her mother, her friendship with Isabella, her marriage with Sam. “What am I missing?”

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Her scheming younger sister Pauline-Félicité was equally plain but not equally kind. Green with envy that her sister was royal mistress while she stewed in the country, Pauline-Félicité begged for an invitation to Versailles to enjoy court life. As her carriage rattled for days from her country estate over the rutted dirt roads toward the palace, she had ample time to plot and connive how she would steal the king from her sister. Taller, louder, wittier than her older sister, Pauline-Félicité soon sparkled at the king’s intimate dinner parties. Her adept intrigue, combined with Madame de Mailly’s naïveté, secured her the prize, and Louis soon fell head over heels in love with the younger sister. When she became pregnant with his child, he married her to a nobleman, Monsieur de Ventimille, who was immediately sent to the provinces. Madame de Mailly, though still officially the maîtresse-en-titre, stood awkwardly by wringing her hands as her sister rose in favor. The king visited Madame de Ventimille daily, leaving his official mistress alone in such penury that courtiers noticed her petticoats had holes in them. While the younger sister was given a beautiful château furnished in blue and gold, Madame de Mailly was crammed into two small, cold rooms in Versailles. A few days after Madame de Ventimille gave birth to the king’s son she went into convulsions and died. Louis, devastated, returned for solace to Madame de Mailly’s arms. For two years she reigned again as undisputed mistress. As naive as ever, Madame de Mailly acceded to another sister’s wish to be summoned to Versailles. Marie-Anne, the widowed marquise de La Tournelle, schemed to throw off her widow’s weeds and take Versailles—and the king—by storm. Armed with a cunning intelligence, she was the most beautiful of all the Mailly-Nesle girls, with wide blue eyes and a ravishing figure. Madame de La Tournelle used all her wiles to attract Louis away from her sister and soon succeeded. But she would never suffer Madame de Mailly to mope about the palace in her shredded petticoats still clinging to the title of maîtresse-en-titre. Before she relinquished her honor to the king, Madame de La Tournelle demanded that he send away the tiresome Madame de Mailly, and he complied. Her second demand was to be created a duchess, and he made her the duchesse de Châteauroux. Only then, when the act of love had been prepaid with the cold clanking of coins and the hollow braying of trumpets, did the newly minted duchess welcome the king into her soft white bed.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In 1674, either because of Madame de Montespan’s potions or Louise’s humiliation, the rejected mistress retired to a convent. But Madame de Montespan could not afford to stop her potions. The king’s eye continued to wander. His valet Bontemps brought willing young ladies to the royal chambers, many of them pushed there by ambitious mothers and aunts. The chief aim was, of course, for the girl to replace Madame de Montespan as maîtresse-en-titre. But the consolation prizes were not bad. Even after a brief interlude with the king, girls of inconspicuous lineage would find themselves married off into illustrious noble houses. In 1675 Madame de Montespan—aware of the king’s interest in several of the queen’s lovely young maids of honor—successfully intrigued to have them dismissed and replaced with older dames. According to Primi Visconti, the king’s mistress, who had given birth to seven illegitimate children, was “shocked, claiming that these young ladies were bringing the Court into ill repute.”13 By the late 1670s Louis had been with his mistress for more than a decade. She had grown heavy and lost her bloom; this fragrant rose was overblown, its petals were splayed; but its thorns were sharper than ever. As the duc de Saint-Simon put it, “Madame de Montespan’s ill humors finished it off…. She had never learned to control her moods…of which the King was most often the target. He was still in love with her, but he was suffering for it.”14 Madame de Sévigné wrote that Madame de Montespan sulked petulantly at the success of her rivals, locking herself in her apartments. Sometimes she threw open her doors in desperate fits of sparkling gaiety. Madame de Sévigné predicted the end was near, for “so much pride and so much beauty are not easily reconciled to take second place. Jealousy runs high, but when has jealousy ever changed the course of events?”15 In 1676, the princesse de Soubise was the object of that jealousy. Though tall and beautiful, the princess suffered the misfortune of flaming red hair. Redheads were thought to be the product of sex during menstruation and were believed to exhibit the lack of sexual self-discipline inherent in the ill-timed copulation of their parents. Madame de Montespan’s eagle eyes noticed that the princess always wore the same pair of emerald pendant earrings whenever her husband left court for Paris. The royal mistress instructed her spies to watch the king’s movements as soon as the emerald earrings appeared, and she was furious to discover that they were a signal for a sexual rendezvous. But the king, though initially aroused by the lascivious proclivities advertised in the princess’s hair, quickly lost interest.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I was more jealous than I had ever been, of anyone! Not because of the house; not because of Cyril, or even Ralph - who had been kind to me, but who had wept for her, and wrung his hands in grief when she lay dying; but because of Florence. Because it was Florence, above all, whom Lilian’s story seemed both to have given me, and to have robbed me of for ever. I thought of my labours of the past few months. I had not made Florence fat and happy, as I had supposed: it had only been time, making her grief less keen, her memories duller. Do you remember how we said that we would meet, she had asked me tonight, and how you didn’t come... ? Her eyes had shone as she had asked it, for I had done her some sort of wonderful favour by not turning up that night, two years before.I had done her a wonderful favour - and done myself, it seemed to me now, the worst kind of disservice. I thought again of how I had spent that night, and the nights following it; I thought of all the lickerish pleasures of Felicity Place - all the suits, the dinners, the wine, the poses plastiques. I would have traded them all in, at that moment, for the chance to have been in Lilian’s place at that dull lecture, and had Florence’s hazel eyes upon me, fascinated! Chapter 18 [image "024" file=wate_9781101078198_oeb_024_r1.jpg] In the days and weeks following Florence’s sad disclosure I became aware that things at Quilter Street were rather changed. Florence herself seemed gayer, lighter - as if, in telling me her history, she had rid herself of some huge burden, and was now flexing limbs that had been cramped and numbed, straightening a back that had been bowed. She was still gloomy, sometimes, and she still went off for walks, alone, and came back wistful.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  But soon Louis grew to admire this intelligent, kindhearted woman. While his mistress took little notice of her growing clutch of children, it was Madame Scarron who nursed them tirelessly through their illnesses and began their education. She was witty, she was sensible, she was efficient, and her rigid piety appealed to the monarch’s suppressed yearning for religion. In gratitude for her efforts, the king gave her the estate of Maintenon, a moated castle and lands, and she took the name Madame de Maintenon. As Madame de Montespan’s jealous temper tantrums and rapacious inroads into the royal treasury increased, the king began to see the greater beauty of his children’s governess. “Madame de Maintenon knows how to love,” he once said wistfully. “There would be great pleasure in being loved by her.”18 One day the amorous monarch approached this unlikely object of his desires with the offer to make her his mistress and, for what was probably the only time in his life, was refused on religious grounds. Though her piety was genuine, there was perhaps a bit of cunning behind her refusal. “Nothing is so clever as to conduct one’s self irreproachably,” Madame de Maintenon wrote a friend.19 Her irreproachable conduct merely increased his ardor—as well she knew it would—and by the late 1670s he spent every spare moment with Madame de Maintenon in her exquisite rooms in Versailles, talking about politics, religion, economics, heavy subjects that even the brilliant Madame de Montespan could barely discuss. The king’s glamorous mistress was positively baffled by her lover’s fascination with such a dry bag of bones as Madame de Maintenon. There were countless stormy scenes between the two former friends, as the once omnipotent mistress felt her power slipping through her perfumed white fingers. One courtier reported hearing Madame de Montespan saying to Madame de Maintenon, “The King has three mistresses. That young hussy [Mademoiselle de Fontanges] performs the actual functions of a mistress; I hold the title; you, the heart.”20 The beginning of the end of Madame de Montespan occurred in 1679, when the Paris police launched an investigation into numerous allegations of poison in the city. Suspects were some of the highest ladies of the land, who—after visiting the witch La Voisin—had become wealthy widows after the sudden demise of disagreeable husbands. Some of the ladies in question fled France immediately rather than face interrogation.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  [image file=image_rsrc3DE.jpg] Friendly RivalrySprightly Nell Gwynn, a comic actress born and bred in the London gutters, maintained her place in the harem of Charles II for nearly two decades despite bitter rivalry from duchesses and countesses. In 1667 seventeen-year-old Nell graduated from selling oranges in the theater pit to performing leading parts on stage. Shortly thereafter, she received her first invitation to Whitehall Palace to entertain at royal parties. The French ambassador reported to Louis XIV that Charles laughed to see her “buffooneries.”42 Though we can assume she began sleeping with the king around this time, she was not given a full-time position as royal mistress with its honors and financial rewards. Whatever remuneration Charles gave her was little enough, as Nell didn’t quit the stage for nearly three years. After she had given the king a son in 1670, Nell went back to the theater in protest. She wanted all her fans to know how shabbily Charles was treating her in comparison with his higher-born mistresses. Her ploy worked. After Charles moved her into a modest town house, bought her furniture, and agreed to pay for her living expenses, she retired from the stage. Nell’s low birth was a severe handicap. The tempestuous Lady Castlemaine, whom Charles had recently created the duchess of Cleveland, was losing her influence after a decade as royal mistress; but instead of making spunky Nell a duchess and installing her in the palace, Charles started casting about for a nobly born woman. Even among the lowborn London performers, Nell had a strong rival in Moll Davis, a charming singer and dancer. The competition between Nell and Moll Davis grew fierce. The king bought a fine house for Moll whereas he only rented one for Nell. He lavished Moll with horses, a carriage, and valuable jewelry. Feeling miffed, Nell invited her rival to lunch on the day Moll had an evening rendezvous with Charles. Nell put a strong laxative in Moll’s food, and afflicted with painful diarrhea, the poor woman spent the evening with a chamber pot instead of the king. In 1671, Louise de Kéroualle, the twenty-two-year-old French-born lady-in-waiting to the queen, finally relented and allowed the king to crack open the glass of her virginity. Though tending toward frigidity, she had a strong hold over him and offered the education and courtly polish which Nell utterly lacked. With Lady Castlemaine now languishing on the sidelines, Louise became the king’s maîtresse-en-titre. But if her powerful position at court was a bed of roses, the thorn that came with it was Nell Gwynn. In 1674 Louise had her portrait painted in a white smock, one breast exposed, leaning on pillows against a background of draperies, with her young son hovering as Cupid. Nell went to the same artist, posed in the same smock with the same background, had her two sons hovering as Cupid with ridiculous grins, and the king pictured in the background looking at her longingly.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  It subsequently became completely imperative for me to distinguish myself from her in my own mind. A-Man had told me that she’d had affairs with married men in the past; I decided that she must have a history of playing second fiddle to other women. Whereas I, on the other hand, am always lead masochist, head girl, first-best, or I don’t play. Period. I also became inordinately, insanely fixated on the size of her ass. It was, after all, twice mine, if not more . . . maybe two and half times mine . . . If A-Man so loved my tight ass, how could he love that wide one, too? Then, a few weeks later, we all had the misfortune to overlap at the gym. Having finished my own exercise routine, I was leaving through the check-in area and there they both were, sitting on the couch: she was scowling, and he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else. What had happened to the sex god who strode about my bedroom with the killer erection? This man pulled his legs under him on the couch and stared at his knees, barely breathing. I breezed through on my way out the door, saying a bright hello to both. What else could I do? And while I didn’t expect her to respond, I was, I realize, testing him. And he failed me. Silence. No acknowledgment of me in front of her. Outside, devastated, I burst into tears. I needed something from him and I wasn’t getting it. And I wasn’t going to get it. Assurance. But of course—and this was the catch-22 that lay at the core of our whole affair—had he given me the assurance I so desperately needed, of my place in his hierarchy and his heart, the fire between us would most likely have been extinguished. It was always just the right balance of that element of not being sure that kept me so in love, so full of desire, so very excited about him. He had never bent to my will, and that wasn’t going to change now. He had always shown me his love; but he wouldn’t confirm it on demand. It was clear to me that A-Man was going to do nothing to resolve this problem. So I had to do something. I got this idea in my head to discuss with the mousy brunette, in a girlie kind of way, the problem, our problem: him. This woman’s agony was now threatening the safety of my world with A-Man, and perhaps if we talked, she and I could work something out. Besides, it wasn’t just her pain anymore; it was also mine. The story was becoming about her and me, with A-Man watching from the sidelines. Was this some unresolved Electra thing? Maybe, but I had no time to think about mythology right now. This was war. And, with her, I had no intention of surrendering.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  26. pr] 7U>G>jue0a Kevd8o%oi, aXX^'Xcw 7rpo/caXot5/*€z>oi, aXX??- >8ovovvT&s. "Let us not become vain-minded, provoking one another, envying one another." This sentence, following the preceding without connective, expresses negatively one element or consequence of that which is positively expressed in TrvevpaTL crrot%<S/ic^. Walking by the Spirit, let us not put false estimates on things, and thus, on the one side, provoke or challenge our fellows to do things they hesitate to do, or, on the other, envy our fellows who dare to do what we do not venture to do. The two parts of the exhortation doubtless have reference to two classes in the churches of the Galatians. Those who fancied that they had attained unto freedom and were in danger of converting their freedom into an occasion to the flesh (v.13), whose xevoSo^ia took the form of pride in their fancied possession of liberty to act without restraint, would be tempted to challenge (xpo/caXctcrflat) their more timid or more scrupulous brethren, saying, e. g., "We dare do these things that the law forbids; are you afraid to do them?" On the other hand, the more scrupulous would, while not quite daring to follow in the footsteps of these, yet be tempted to regard this spurious liberty of their fellow- Christians as a thing to be desired, and to look at them with envy, wishing that they felt the same freedom. Cf. the similar, though not quite identi- cal, situation more fully reflected in i Cor., chap, 8, where the apostle addresses especially those who with conceit of knowl- edge act regardless of the well-being of their more timid or more scrupulous brethren; and that set forth in Rom., chap. 14, where, however, the relation of the two parties is not as here, that one challenges and the other envies, but that one despises and the other judges. As in those cases the apostle prescribes Christian love as the corrective of the divisive evils, so here he prescribes walking by the Spirit, the fruit of which is love, joy, peace, etc. 324 GALATIANS The relation of this verse to what precedes and to what follows is similar to that of v.1 to its context; it is the conclusion of what pre- cedes and the introduction to what follows. Yet it is the former con- nection that is closest, and the greater paragraph division should be made, not as in WH., Stage, Zahn, between w.M and JS, or as in Mey. Weizs. Stapfer, between w.» and **, but at the end of the chapter, as in AV. Tdf . Ell. Ltft. Segond, SieL ERV. ARV. make a paragraph both here and at the beginning of v. *«.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Contriving to run into her at the gym, I approached her boldly in my carefully planned outfit and asked if we had “something to talk about.” Although she was not sure that we did, she said she was willing to talk. I asked her what had happened. She said that she had been so unhappy with him, with having so little of him, that she’d asked him about the other women in his life. The Truth Will Set You Free Strategy: she’d suspected that his answer would hurt her, but she’d hoped that it would give her the courage to stop seeing him. Well, clearly it hadn’t, because almost immediately she was trying the same strategy again with me, asking me all these intensely personal questions. How often did he and I fuck? Did he sleep over? Did we eat dinner together? And I found myself doing the most awful thing. I found myself answering her, praying that this time her strategy would succeed, even though I knew it wouldn’t. And so we all limped along: no monogamy, no threesome, more fucking, no resolution. #276 He directed me onto all fours. He stood behind me and gently but insistently tapped my pubic bone skyward. I raised my ass to meet him. He tapped the insides of both thighs. I separated my legs. I laid my head down on the bed, ass high, back arched. He parted my pussy, found my little clit, and began looking and sucking and flicking. I imagined that other chick, the one with the wide ass, sitting in a chair, naked, legs spread, as he knelt before her pussy. Not an ugly pussy, but a bigger pussy than mine, a different, mousy pussy, and as she sat slumped, spread and slutty, he sucks on her clit, her obvious, swollen, big red clit. She is uninvolved, shameless. I am watching this secretly from behind a door. He knows I’m watching and spreads her pussy more and more so I can see her clit. She doesn’t know I’m watching. As her clit stands out, like a small erect cock, proud, flagrant, and hungry, I come. Conquest of the other woman is my orgasm, my pleasure. The other woman is my whore—the whore in me. Then he fucks my pussy and then my ass. My clit runneth over. THE BANANA The memory of humiliation is the bleeding scar of reliving it. . . . Humiliation, I believe, is not just another experience in our life, like, say, an embarrassment. It is a formative experience. It forms the way we view ourselves as humiliated persons. —AVISHAI MARGALIT

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  After ten years of this kind of training, even a good class looked bad to me; I had perfected not only my pliés but my ability to criticize myself. I sure wished I could put those bad classes on God like the other girls—what a relief it would have been. But they were living under an “illusion,” while I held up the banner of truth, and so I soldiered on, a martyr to my atheism. God, I was jealous. Not of their dancing—of their faith. My anxiety about this haunting intangible found a productive outlet when, at age eleven, I taught myself to crochet from a book. My mother knitted and had taught me the two-needle knit-one-purl-one routine, but there was always the possibility of a lost stitch, discovered too late to correct. The risk of this appalled me. With crocheting, however, there were not only far more possibilities for patterns but there was also no way to lose a stitch. I began with scarves and berets and graduated to ponchos, turtleneck sweaters, bags of every size, lacy blouses with ruffles, ties for men, bedspreads, and intricate doilies made with very fine sparkling thread. All those stitches, all that yarn and mercerized cotton, all those pastel colors, in and out, up and around, winding and unwinding, knot after knot. I was fast, I was good, I was compulsive, and I was relentless with my hook and thread—everyone in my family wore some strange woolly item I had made for them. I always had several projects going simultaneously, so my hands never rested. Stitchery, I see now, was a perfect repository for my ambitious anal tendencies: each article grew in a controlled and foreseeable manner, and was not subject to the irrational chaos of my existential anxieties. I crocheted my way right through adolescence while sewing ribbons on my toe shoes and attempting to emulate the ethereal faith of my peers. I believe now that dancing is about two things: good behavior and faith made visible. For me the first was easy, the second impossible—hence more desirable. Being a dancer was my earliest, and perhaps most earnest, attempt to have faith. But it was like trying to be a nun without believing in God. I had effort in abundance, but I could not will faith.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  268; Dial. 353; Iren. Haer. 1. 111, it is probably still used in the sense of “sect,” or “division,” as a term of reproach. It clearly means “heresy” in Mart. Pol. Epil. 1 (Ltft. 2), which is, however, of considerably later date. ®0évos, a classical word from Pindar and Herodotus down, means “i}l-will,” “malice,” “envy” (cf. under GqAo0s above); not in Lxx; in Apocr., Wisd. 274 62° 1 Mac. 816 3 Mac. 67; always in a bad sense, “envy.” So also in N. T. (Mt. 2718 Mk. 151° Rom. 129, etc.) except in Jas. 45, where it is used tropically, meaning “eager desire for (exclusive) pos- session of,’’ and is ascribed to the Spirit of God. In the present passage it can not be sharply distinguished from Gyros. If the words are to be discriminated, GjAo0s would signify ‘‘jealousy,” gbévor “envyings.”” The plural denotes different acts, or specific forms of envious desire. Mé0ct and x6uor fall in a class by themselves. 407 occurs in classic writers from Herodotus and Antipho down, meaning, (1) ‘‘strong drink,” (2) “drunkenness,” and with the same meanings in the Lxx (in Hag. 1* apparently meaning “‘satiety”” rather than “drunkenness”’). In the Apocr. and N. T. it occurs in the second sense only. xdwos (of doubtful etymology) occurs in classic writers from Homer down, mean- ing “revelling,” “carousing,” such as accompanies drinking and festal processions in honour of the gods, especially Bacchus; it is not found in the Lxx; occurs in the Apocr. in Wisd. 14% 2 Mac. 64, and in N. T. in the same sense as in classical writers; in Rom. 131" it is associated as here with w46n, in 1 Pet. 43, with otvopAuyta, “drunkenness.” For a similar catalogue of vices, see Corpus Hermeticum XIII (XIV) 7, in Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 342; Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes, Vol. II, p. 224. For a discussion of Gentile morals, see L. Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms, 8th ed., 4 vols., Leipzig, 1910; E. T. from 7th ed., New York, 1909, 1910; de Pressensé, The Ancient World and Christianity, Bk. V, Chap. II, § I, pp. 424-432; Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew, London, 1862. For the same kind of material in the form of a connected story, see Becker, Gallus; Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean; Bottiger, Sabina. References to Gentile authors are to be found in de Pressensé and Becker, and with especial copiousness in Friedlander’s great work. a Ne CA <4 6c a ee t \ a a wpodéyw vuty Kabws mpoetrov br. of Ta TovadTra Tpaooovtes Bacireiayv Beod ov KAnpovouncovow, “respecting Vie 2 Ome2 311 which I tell you beforehand, as I have (already) told you in advance, that they who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”