Transcripts For CSPAN2 Mo Moulton The Mutual Admiration Society 20200121

currently a senior lecturer in the history department at the university of an end last to date written one previous book entitled irish published in 2014. the mutual admiration society centers on dorothy sayers and five friends who founded a writing group in 1912 at the college oxford. the classmates entered at a time when women could receive an education but not a degree. october 1920 they became some of the first women to graduate. they pushed the boundaries in other ways as well working to rights and reproduction and family making. working to overcome the restricted sexism of the time, the women of the mutual admiration society are still in inspiration to us today and we can follow their example as we work for a more equal society. here to tell us more about them as the author mo moulton. [applause] thank you for coming out on an incredibly cold tuesday night. it's an honor to be back at the square during this event. i talked for six years in the literature program so i feel again the shadows of the communities o before this book s born. it is itself a book about community and relationships and how having these relationships help us to become more than we might otherwise be and help us to grow and transcend the boundaries that might otherwise be in place. it's also as the introduction eluded to it is also a bit of that happenbook ofthat happens e revolution. they got to witness another famous firsts. they were part of the first generation of women to vote in parliamentary elections and part of the first cohort to be granted in the university and solomon sang on british juries and so on so there is a lot that happens in this moment. part of what i want to explore is what happens when we are given access to a world that has seen a legislative revolution start but not before transformation. the answer to that question is community into the space they made for each other. the book started on an airplane that started when i bought the novel bobby knight. it's one of the most beloved novels she published about 11 short stories and this is one that is set in a centreville college which is a women's college at oxford university. i bought it coming back from a conference and the first thing i want to say is watch out because airplane reading can change your life. so i read this book and i was blown away by the way that it was a story of intellectual integrity in a female scholarly community. when i got off the plane i wanted to know who these women were. it wasn't just complete imagination but describing real relationships in the community. i became fairly frustrated because i was finding out a lot as a mother and as a wife into somebody that had relationships with a series of men. being a historian i started investigating the friendships and what i found is that it turns out they are amazing the women that were in her life and so the book focuses on the friendships that she made it. it focuses on the four of them have stayed friends throughout their lives. so she wrote fiction and was an advertiser and theologian as well. the popular historian and a playwright, dorothy i have to deal with a lot of dorothy is in this book. the parents of late victorian britain were not very original in their naming. so she founded the theater and became an english director and a social glue of the group that became a midwife writer of the justice of the peace and a variety of other was and the book also touches on other people involved in the group who became a pioneering science-fiction writer and english professor in pennsylvania. i want to start by giving you an introduction to the group when they are first meeting and give you a flavor of what they were like, the way that they were both serious and quite fun-loving and silly wacky and all sorts of ways to. the first recorded meeting of the admira mutual admiration soy took place in 1812 and is noted in the diary. phillips provided the refreshments and the titles on november 24 another meeting took place this one over tea and they read her work. they also baptized the club saying if we didn't give ourselves the title of mutual admiration society and the rest of college would. she wasn't wrong. it was a lighthearted way that they put on each year and in britain and other novelists that never joined remarked 20 years later they took themselves quite seriously and still apparently do. they also enjoy the group some and one evening in january they found themselves with time on their hands as they waited for from us to return from london. they crept into the room and assembled a spooky finger to the configure on her bed with lids for eyes and hair pin the nose and mouth and stalking and hauled brush her hair. enhancing the effects of the cushions on the body and stuck a pair of shoes straight up at the end of the bed. the crowning touch was a pair of gloves hanging out over the sheets and holding a bottle with a label suicide by poisoning. luckily, she walked in during the preparations and was delighted. perhaps inspired by the success of the joke th they state an elaborate party two days later. somerville college had allegedly been built on the site and was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a gun that says too much education rendered a woman unimaginable. she had seen this herself one night on the stroke of 11 they invited eight other students to meet the ghost. she enlisted but other guests came to the party in all innocence. she contributed her own elemen elements. together they sat and told tales working themselves into a state with all sorts of grisly stories. as the clock struck 11 someone's head i believe that he has arranged a ghost for us. they would create a distraction until they went around. they saw outside of the window a shadow figure. others noticed the figure carried a baby in her arms. it was in fact phyllis dressed up in a nightgown with a black lace dress as a third with paint. she let out a howl when she reached the window of the room where the parties had gathered, jim asked her in and became both a. in her opinion the only person that was not the least annoyed and may not really have the most dorothy and phyllis was left to spend hours scrubbing off the paint. so i think that they kind of gave each other this space in history when women were advocating for the right to full inclusion. it wasn't being granted yet. they were under an enormous amount of scrutiny and pressure to prove that they belonged in that they were going to transgress too many boundaries. being in the group allowed them to experiment with different ways of having an intellectual presence and so to be more than they might have otherwise been a. they finished their education in the midst of world war i and between world war i and the difficulty they grew apart for a while and i think that affects the moment i sort of worried perhaps that was a set of stories that was that the end of it and they experienced a lot of good reasons to be distracted from one another and be self absorbed during world war i. she had a series of disastrous love affair is culminating. she got pregnant outside of wedlock and had a son she chose to keep the pregnancy and birth a secret that evening of their work and the things we remember them for now the short reading gives a flavor of this reunion. i wrote down what page it's on a. sometime in 1928 very early 1929 they reached out. she no longer needed help finding a place to foster her son who would grow up in her cousin'cousins home although hes adopted by her husband. she did however by the way of anything as to your suggestion with regards to the one in doctor etc.. she's very nice and fixed me up quite satisfactorily so that's that. in return she promised to attend this year's somerville. oxford colleges hold feasts for the alumni and celebrations have a nickname. they said i think i must go this year. certainly he replied why not. nine years after she earned her degree, returning had been a repeal. she confessed she had delayed writing the arrangement. it's one of the repugnance is the psychoanalysts are always talking about. i don't really want to go, she said. returning to test locations rekindling old connections. the things disturb on the unconscious level. she said she hated looking back. nostalgia, the whole business. she didn't want to think about her past self or to be encouraged to feel sentimental in the company of her former companions. i like to see you because you are both people whose company is in itself delightful. but a college full of people with whom i have no other bond but once we were all there together. even if she went she said everyone will say i'm just as intolerable as i was 15 years ago and with every justification i am. [laughter] at the end of the letter, she said she had finally returned to request a room for the reunion. she said i will sing the song and talk jolly but i will not drink cocoa. there are limits. unfortunately i don't know if she drink cocoa when she went. i knew sh she didn't sign the souvenir program. i think that the story of the three indian. so the paradox is a. as an advertising copywriter sometime in mid-1930 the mid-19f novels that are fairly serious. she becomes a playwright and writes about the life of jesus that could broadcast on the bbc in the comedy there is a sort of phase change because of the quantum leap there are physics metaphors i can reach for. she transforms what she's able to do, and that hasn't really been explained by the folks that studied the work. if my book has an agenda it is to show it's putting sayers back into the context that explains the transformation. she goes by the nickname barb and it's clear that three of them spoke a lot about issues of work come hell to live an ethical life and be in a relationship. they were struggling with her marriage at this time. she wasn't sure if she should seek divorce or not or if she wanted her son to be adopted by her husband. muriel was also struggling for ufirstof all with how to build a sustainable household with another woman and how to have the legal protections that they could and that sort of thing. for a long stretch of time they were very important to her and what i think is so important as those conversations then inform the series of collaborations they undertook. i had a little bit to read about the transformation. around the late 1920s moment as they are rekindling this friendship, she decides to introduce a love interest into the stories. but he read her words about that decision she dragged her feet at the idea of introducing romance to the detective novels. they were generally a nuisance and crime stories, she said. but in 1930, seven years after the first appearance of her famous hero, she said she was getting a bit weary feet he brought in money, was getting more money at the senior she published a novel that took the series in a new direction. strong poison that fictionalizes the experiences with the previous lover and introduces a proper heroine. if lord peter whimsy is the damage he wrote version, hairy it is the modern movement that has been hurt by love but whose intelligence carries her through. is more than a love interest. she's not a hard but instead you're engaged in the struggle to recognize the desires. what's more, as a detective novelist herself, she struggles with exactly the problem help to make the detective novels more emotionally realistic while working within the comfortable narrative conventions. so she writes strong poison, introduces the problem of the love interests and the detective novel, how to think about the relationships seriously in this genre and then she writes a series of novels that are well worth your time if you haven't read them but they do nothing to advance these questions. she even jokes in the midst of it she says lord peter says he's anxious for florida. it's still holding out. he is now 42 but still active and hopes to bring it off before he's actually decrepit. and i should say to give her credit she was 42. she was speaking from experience. the time she was going to do with the characters it's actually in conversation with muriel in conversation -- and the solution. she had been working as a playwright trying to make a name for herself as a playwright. somebody approached and said perhaps you would like to write a novel, a play based on one of the novels and she turned that down but instead propose to sayers why don't we write a play together. she was sold and agreed let's write a collaborative play. february 101935, they visited in london and every dinner they begin to sketch the outlines of the play. that night they stayed up talking about this play business until early the next morning. the next day over lunch at the restaurant they mapped out a plan. at the suggestion they agreed to use the three proprietary characters peter, harry and the butler of limited by new versions of the types and to write a collaborative play that would've off to the novel's title to the stage. by the time he left london and outline had emerged. the play would be set during the honeymoon and would provide scope supplement the charming coziness they needed to reinvent marriage in order to send them. but the honeymoon that became the title of the play would show them doing just that as they soon realized this would also mean getting the characters engaged on the page so they could understand why. decided to accept one of the proposals. this she would do with him after the honeymoon but before that was performed. as a project of the collaboration changes it is clear peter whimsy and the characters are not just go projections on their part. it's about the relationships and love and work and in a sense they become alternate models for. and peter. with her curly blond hair and her ring exactly. the bar was a high school teacher and my fiancé who died in the war but this is probably mixing two things up. it was a gift from evian data was invisible because of her s sex. it was the true collaboration on the 5050. back home they consulted with the solicitor arrangement envisioned were realistic. by february 1916 they had written about 4,000 words of dialogue for act one. she said this and in turn they have another weekend together at the end of february. in march there was a lunch she went to stay for a few days and in between the visits they spoke on the telephone and send each other detailed drafts and long letters with questions and ideas. one was charmingly your partner and build. follow the rules of the club every movement is laden .-full-stop if the audience so that the audience has as much chance as the crime investigat investigator. second, the love interest is here and a central part of the theme. both of these accomplishments were hard on. in this process of making the love interest something other than extraneous to the detective played. she was a crucial interlocutor and objected to the idea they had gone to this cottage for the honeymoon and they've discovered a murder, surprised. they discovered a murder but bar objects to the idea. and peter would share their wedding night on a dead man's interest. she was apologetic and said tell him i'm sorry about the bride. she had been thinking pragmatically. they would choose one of their honeymoon cottage after all the boy didn't die in the bed. but they were willing to concede. but if it really disgusts her, point it out. she thought the whole thing was funny. funny. i ensure that the mattress would satisfy. i only mentioned it to illustrate the way that your fan are all mad about the boy and it gave me a good laugh but if they were standing here she was also correct about the importance of getting the emotional resonance of the play. by march the sixth, she had written a scene except for the quotation of which won't come right it is too shy making for words and she kept falling into blank. what a problem to have. she considered using a version of her own in engine that wouldn't be featured and we have come to that where the world sleeps on its access to the heart of christ. in the end she turns to verify the sender of the play held and she wrote i think that in this scene my mind has been so closely set upon the construction that i've probably missed some of the necessary emotions. she was worried especially about the balance between comedy and the inevitable note that is bound to creep in if a murderer is going to be protected and hanged. don't alter anything at all if it seems weak or inadequate. i trust your judgment quite explicitly. the quarreling scene which was the emotional climax of the play. here peter offers to give up his work but she fears the specter of violence to disturb the honeymoon. in mid-april, they were agonizing over how to get the tone exactly right. it would have to be frightfully earnest, she said, because. we'll never do that you are my lord and master stunt. building something new, peter and harriet will be two gentlemen come honest with each other and approaching their work with integrity. i don't want to exaggerate about it at all. it is comedy that i have a feeling since it worked out so naturally, it is in a small way right. probably use all the sight of it before i did a. i dedicated the book to the concept of chosen family because i think that that is what this group of friends became to each other. they didn't only offer support space and opportunity for transformation for growth and meaning. it's a term that fueled the work and editing six volumes of the fantastic correspondence. it fuels the term to theology and i think it fueled all of them to become fully human. that was the later collaboration that km oregon was a series of essays that became famous in the title and easy joke to make the spoiler is that she answers yes, women are human, but what is important is that through becoming a kind of family network to each other, becoming a network of support and love mutual recognition to one another if you are willing and able to stand up and be counted. >> we've done so much archival work as anyon anyone that pickse book will find out. what was the most interesting or exciting thing that you came across in the archives ask >> there were exciting things in the archives, so one of the things that is true about writing this kind of history a common thing that will be cited as it's hard to write history if the sources don't exist. we can't find them. i am moving into a phase now where i'm thinking in a way it misleads us and what is so interesting is there's a ridiculous abundance of sources if we look for them. all of these women wrote about their lives and in most cases saved a lot of what they wrote or what was returned to them particularly moving to be, she collected an archive of her life had she lived in the 21st century she would have been an avid participant in social media and influence are quite frankly. she also kept her correspondence not what she wrote about what was returned to her. but herself as a historian she saw me coming in a way it that collected the correspondence. given that, she lived to a very old age and died in the 1980s. i was excited the day that i discovered an envelope marked to be burned upon red. it contains a moving and honest series of letters from her other partners. in the layers and need for secrecy both within their social circles and their wider world and there is repeated references to. i know you wil you'll bring thir as soon as you receive it and then more enticingly, i know you asked me to bring your letters but i haven't done it yet because i will likely be greeting them. so i imagine her reading the letters and shuttling them and they often were not if it didn't match the date can be invoked to be taken out again. and this is a relationship that has mostly ended by the mid-1940s and she kept them for another 40 years. so they obviously remained very important to her. it evoked for me a surprising abundance of sources about things we were told there are no sources for and also the references to the burning and the fact there's archival collections there is a couple others examples like that i'm so grateful that it wasn't burned and it makes me think of all the things that were burned at the same time. >> did you write the adaptation of the story? >> i'm the worst person to answer that question. i'm not a watcher of tv adaptations of all and i know that there are profound loyalties. we need an adaptation for the 21st century. i know that many of the sayers models are being reissued right now and there is a new version out there that's beautiful with a new cover so i think we need sort of the bbc or pbs to step up to the plate and have a new version. i would also say that online there is a clip from the original which wasn't adapted for tv at all especially before there were lots of microphones everywhere. on youtube you can watch it from 1937 the play version of the honeymoon i'm wondering what tension there might have been between the two different people. >> absolutely. the complex life really affected her relationships in all sorts of ways. the character is a really interesting one because she is somebody that was really close and afterwards they consider sharing a room together in the early 1920s she dedicates the first book to her and says he never would have staggered into existence without your assistance. they collaborated on a red pulp fiction together and sort of wrote fake compared religion essays so this is a sort of example that came out of this group and then at some point in the mid-1920s that friendship just and. it's not that she disappears. she remained somewhat a fairly successful author and stays in the attenuated contact with other members of the associates around the friendship is over and that is another mystery of the biography we don't know exactly what happens. it seems to have ended after a holiday they took together. they might have experimented what would it be like to play secret to your friends and then it went really badly. she also wrote to a lover that i mentioned she wrote about the difficulties of having a married lover and what was so difficult about it is that she couldn't introduce him to her friends and meet her isolated and lonely because it would have been a false position to introduce them to him and she didn't want to lie to them either so it tore the fabric of the friendship which in a way makes it even more moving to be later on if she was able to talk about the difficulties and cannot isolate herself. but yes, navigating the transition to the adulthood and the relationship puts a significant strain. and in a different sense i haven't talked much although my secret hope is that people will come to this book for dorothy sayers but will stay because she's amazing. she is a totally remarkable person. all of that pulls her away from the group for a time and it isn't until her children are older and her own life has changed in some ways that she really rekindles the rest of the connection. but they stayed friends like for 60 years. by the end of their lives they say we have to call each other for our birthdays now because it is a lot to travel to actually see one another, but they do. so, in spite of those things, they just fade. hispanic i'm curious the most interesting thing that you discovered in the early years but it's kind of the cohesion that brings them together. what was the catalyst moment that you enjoyed? >> i think that my favorite example of the kind of things they were doing, they rewrote hamlet and write a way that sentencthe way thatsentence telt them. at this time the prince of wales was also a student and his nickname at the time. since he is the prince of denmark what i love about it ass it is a hilarious rewriting but it's also a sort of gets rid of all of the tragic misogyny of the actual play, so it becomes a play in which the prince of wales or which hamlet himself is dating a philia and she's been giving him presents but he's also been in bed for some reason and has been pawning the presence and she's starting to notice and he starts getting stressed committee so stressed about this debt if he becomes delusional and sees ghosts talking to him and stuff and all the rest of the characters in the play got the king and queen and all the friends they all realize that he is running off the rails they come up with an elaborate scheme involving a false dagger and more ghost costumes and stuff to snap them into reality into an us with the queen walking happily towards a heading off on their honeymoon. on one level it looked really silly. they came up with the title and this is a joint product shame but it shows how they engaged with the high culture that they were being taught and they were not afraid to turn it into the popular culture that then makes a serious point and some of that is what they kept doing for the rest of their career. if you like that is the best place to end this unless there are other burning questions. [applause]

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