Cecil Dreeme. Theodore Winthrop

      

      CECIL DREEME

      Q19: THE QUEER AMERICAN NINETEENTH CENTURY

       Christopher Looby, Series Editor

      Queer is a good nineteenth-century American word, appearing almost everywhere in the literature of the time. And, as often as not, the nineteenth-century use of the word seems to anticipate the sexually specific meanings it would later accrue. Sometimes queer could mean simply odd or strange or droll. But at other times it carried within itself a hint of its semantic future, as when Artemus Ward, ostensibly visiting a settlement of “Free Lovers” in Ohio, calls them “some queer people,” or when the narrator of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s “Felipa” refers to the eponymous child, who wears masculine clothing, as “a queer little thing,” or when Herman Melville, writing of the master-at-arms Claggart in Billy Budd, tells us that young Billy, sensitive to Claggart’s attentively yearning yet malicious behavior toward him, “thought the master-at-arms acted in a manner rather queer at times.” Q19: The Queer American Nineteenth Century makes available again a set of literary texts from the long American nineteenth century in which the queer appears in all its complex range of meanings. From George Lippard’s The Midnight Queen: “‘Strange!’ cried one. ‘Odd!’ another. ‘Queer!’ a third.”

      CECIL DREEME

      Theodore Winthrop

       Edited and with an introduction by Christopher Looby

       PENN

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia

      Publication of this volume was aided by gifts from the UCLA Friends of English and the UCLA Dean of Humanities.

      Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press

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      Published by

      University of Pennsylvania Press

      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

      www.upenn.edu/pennpress

      Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

      ISBN 978-0-8122-2365-1

      CONTENTS

       Introduction: Cecil Dreeme and the Misfortune of Sexuality Christopher Looby

       Editor’s Note

       Biographical Sketch of the Author George William Curtis

       I. Stillfleet and His News

       II. Chrysalis College

       III. Rubbish Palace

       IV. The Palace and Its Neighbors

       V. Churm Against Densdeth

       VI. Churm as Cassandra

       VII. Churm’s Story

       VIII. Clara Denman, Dead

       IX. Locksley’s Scare

       X. Overhead, Without

       XI. Overhead, Within

       XII. Dreeme, Asleep

       XIII. Dreeme, Awake

       XIV. A Mild Orgie

       XV. A Morning with Densdeth

       XVI. Emma Denman

       XVII. A Morning with Cecil Dreeme

       XVIII. Another Cassandra

       XIX. Can This Be Love?

       XX. A Nocturne

       XXI. Lydian Measures

       XXII. A Laugh and a Look

       XXIII. A Parting

       XXIV. Fame Awaits Dreeme

       XXV. Churm Before Dreeme’s Picture

       XXVI. Towner

       XXVII. Raleigh’s Revolt

       XXVIII. Densdeth’s Farewell

       XXIX. Dreeme His Own Interpreter

       XXX. Densdeth’s Dark Room

       Notes

      INTRODUCTION

      Cecil Dreeme and the Misfortune of Sexuality