Seven Men and Two Others

I have started reading Max Beerbohm's Seven Men and Two Others, thus dipping into some Modernist prose for a change. However, fear not, my conversion to Modernism is not imminent: Beerbohm reflects upon the 1890s from an early-20th-century standpoint, so the thesis-related interest is there. I have had this edition since the summer, but it 'posed' unread on my bookshelf until I mused over the possibility of reading it to take a break from my engagements with Henry James yesterday. I am writing a chapter on Henry James and so naturally, have that unique closeness and academic respect for his sobering and heavily-qualified long, spidery sentences. The most frustrating aspect of overdoising on HJ is that every other piece of text you later encounter appears too clean-cut & clipped in its comparative accessibility. Max Beerbohm is refreshing because whilst accessible, his prose is engrained with a rich late-Victorian decadence and the short sentences contribute towards its parodic tone: 'When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by Mr.Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for SOAMES, ENOCH. I had feared he would not be there. He was not there. But everybody else was.' This parodic tone is also in the title, right? That coy 'and two others' is an amusing addition. Perhaps a more Jamesian prosaic title would be 'Portraits of Nine Men,' but Beerbohm is ushering in an extra two men, as if they had joined the party late, separating them from the seven other men. This numbers game works by leaving all men at this 'threshold' stage (that is the stage before we have turned to the first page) anonymous. All we know is that seven men have some kind of (unknown) unity. They are caricatures. The outline figure is there (as the illustration of the man with his back to us reinforces), but distorts the essence of the people introduced to us for ease of entertainment & reference.

In 'Enoch Soames' (1912) his description of a Parisian artist-- visiting Oxford in 1893 to 'do a series of twenty-four portraits in Lithograph' of 'doddering old men' (a.k.a Oxford dons 'who had never consented to sit to anyone')-- embodies that modernist modish style, that figure of the bookish artist who has become so iconic (& a Woody Allen prototype?): 'He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was  a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Edmond de Goncourt. He knew everyone in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford.'

I picked this 1954 edition in a second-hand bookshop for £1. Back in 1954, it was 2/6...There is something written in Dutch on the back cover: twensche. At least, I think it is Dutch. I'll ask my Dutch friend tomorrow if I see her.

I have resisted from thinking about the male self-fashioning of Modernism, which is suggested in the title. As if seven men were not enough, two more are included. Contributing to classical modernism Beerbohm is promoting the elitist masculine ambition, thus occluding female representation. I am interested to continue reading this volume to assess whether Beerbohm keeps us in this male-dominated world, this homosocial blockade designed to exclude those who fall short of the masculine elite. I'll keep you posted...