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A funny thing about all this recent talk of “The Establishment”: it reminded me less of anything going on during this 2016 Democratic primary season than the 2004 general election season. I remember that much of the talk then was that there would be little or no functional difference between then-Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush due to their membership in the the Yale University secret society Skull&Bones. IIRC, the theory went that we, The Great Unwashed, would continue to receive the short end of the stick at the hands of the elite, whether Bush or Kerry was elected. In essence, it was a variation of the “there’s no difference between the two parties” theme that became prominent during the 2000 Gore-Bush general election contest.
At the time, it revived a fascination that I have occasionally had with secret societies. Growing up, I never really felt like I fit in anywhere and I always felt as if I was missing out on something. Whether it was the family or the many varied school cliques or the various frats and sororities of the Divine Nine that became acquainted with in high school (and later in college). When I dropped out of college at 18 and moved to New York, most of my friends were in the ball culture scene but even then, the message was clearly delivered that...well, I didn’t exactly belong there, either (for the most part, for good reasons, now that I think about it).
So as far as “secret societies” are concerned, I’m ambivalent of them on one hand yet I am bit envious and fascinated of those that are members.
Nowadays, I suppose that I’m more of an individualist than a “joiner” of anything but if I were to have my choice to join anything like a “secret society” (and in most cases, it’s a matter of being chosen rather than making a choice to join), I would love to be a member of Cambridge University’s Cambridge Conversazione Society, more famously known as simply “The Apostles.”
From the website of St John’s College, Cambridge University:
The Apostles is a secret society of Cambridge University members that meets to discuss and debate such topics as truth, God, and ethics. The group, also known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, was founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson. Tomlinson went on to become the first Bishop of Gibraltar.
Most Apostles came from the colleges of St John's, Trinity and King's. Since the 1970s the Apostles have invited select women to join the group. The origin of the Apostles' nickname dates from the original membership of 12.
One does not simply join the Apostles, and in the early days election had to be unanimous. A 'potential' candidate did not know he was proposed until he was accepted. At his initiation a new recruit would be briefed on the Society's history and traditions, sign 'The Book' (a leather bound diary which all previous members had signed) and swear a 'curse' or vow of secrecy.
Active (and usually undergraduate) members are known as Apostles, and former members such as graduates or fellows are referred to as Angels. Every few years, amid great secrecy, all the Angels are invited to dinner at a Cambridge college or London venue.
The list of current and former members of The Apostles is literally a who’s who of the British artistic and “intellgensia” class (the one current member that I am familiar with is the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen). The best-known time period for The Apostles would have to be the early 20th century when it’s the Society must have been at its absolute gayest with a membership included novelist E.M. Forster, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, economist John Maynard Keynes, and literary critic and biographer Lytton Strachey.
Lytton Strachey is more famously known as a member of the early 20th century British arts and literary circle known as The Bloomsbury Group. Indeed, three of the members of the Bloomsbury Group, Leonard Woolf (husband of novelist Virginia Woolf), Keynes, and Strachey were also prominent members of The Apostles (scholarly opinion varies on whether and to what extent Forster can be considered a member of Bloomsbury, proper).
Kossack Richard Lyon did a wonderful diary called “Love Among the Bloomies” about a year and a half ago and it is well worth re-readings, as much for the wonderful paintings as the report itself. I wanted to do something narrower on Strachey himself.
While browsing in a nearby used book store, I came across a paperback copy of a Lytton Strachey book called “The Really Interesting Question and Other Papers.” edited by Paul Levy. The book is a small collection of Lytton Strachey writings that remained unpublished until after Lytton Strachey’s death in 1932 and soon after the death of Lytton Strachey’s brother and literary executor (and Sigmund Freud translator and fellow Apostle), James Strachey in 1967.
The writings in The Really Interesting Question are mostly short and varied. For example, there is correspondence dated 1916 on the issue of conscription into the army; Strachey, and several members of his various circles were anti-conscription; both Lytton and James Strachey were active an anti-conscription group. There are also number of short dramatic sketches on the subjects like Freud, hashish, and even a parody of the American expatriate writer Henry James.
But by far, my favorite inclusion in the tiny volume is the text of four short papers that Strachey delivered at meetings of The Apostles’. Levy’s introduction describes how even in this society of some of the best known minds at Cambridge University (and the entire world, for that matter), Strachey stood out:
...to later generations, Strachey’s influence was also evident...Strachey, though, never insincere, added to the Apostolic style a certain note of levity. He taught the brothers that it was possible to deliver one’s deeply held convictions in a sophisticated and often funny tone, a tone that, while not apologetic or self-deprecating, showed an awareness of the relative worth of one’s opinions and arguments. Strachey perfected the paradox of tone...
That is the very sophistication, wit, and irreverence that was to become Strachey’s signature in his classic biography, Eminent Victorians.
Many of these elements are evident in a paper Strachey delivered no earlier than 1908 titled “Will it come right in the end?” where Strachey challenges conventional, English, and, of course, Victorian notions decency and lasciviousness. Strachey shines his lantern on various books and materials published in England at that time an breaks down the definition of various answers to the question what society considers to be “lascivious.” For example:
a) “the official classes”- a class which “includes the average Englishman” and who believes that “lasciviousness” is “always an evil” to be rooted out with the exception of a “a man and a woman united in lawful wedlock” in a “double bed.” Strachey notes that since the place of an act of “copulating” (“in the street”) or venereal diseases is lascivious, then even with the exception carved out for one man/one woman marriage in a double bed, the idea that even that sex is either “lascivious” or the idea is already planted.
All of the other examples pretty much strike at the heart of Victorian notions “evil” and “lascivious” in other areas of art and life, ultimately concluding that without notions of indecency, there is no beauty and not art.
If good literature is to flourish, it is to be absolutely essential that there should be no restraint upon literature that is bad. The same rule applies to conduct; and the only hope of our even getting a really beautiful and vigorous charming civilization is to allow the whole world to fuck and bugger and abuse themselves and generally misbehave to their hearts content . p. 80
I’m just trying to imagine those line being uttered in a room with the likes of a philosopher like G.E. Moore. I’m trying to even imagine these words being delivered in “secret society” quarters that, nevertheless, occurred about a decade after the Oscar Wilde trial. Yes, these are the musings of a young man of the upper classes (“The Establishment,” if you will) on a journey to the very much to “change the value of the currency” of a puritanical Victorian British culture or, at least, would record the extent to which that particular face was a facade. And sometimes, it takes a mole within “The Establishment” like a Lytton Strachey to do that.
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