Marriage or Celibacy?: The ‘Daily Telegraph’ on a Victorian Dilemma by John M. Robson (review)

348 LETTERS IN CANADA 1995 Jones's scholarly research is virtually exhaustive - as Wordsworthians have come to expect from his outstanding previous publications as a bibliographer. The appendix on editions of the 'Lucy Poems' is quite helpful: on a very specific textual and bibliographical level it strengthens Jones's argument about the constructedness of the grouping, and in its sensible questioning of the Cornell Wordsworth ideology it articulates the reservations that many Wordsworth scholars have held for some time. By the end of Jones's study, the reader realizes that the 'Lucy Poems' have been and continue to be one ground on which we stand or fall as interpreters : it is not so much that we test our every latest theory against these poems, but that we ourselves are tested by them. As Hartman says in 'The Interpreter: A Self-Analysis,' when we ask poems to yield up their identity, they sometimes allusively reply, 'Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself .' It is this process of unfolding and constructing 'self-' as well as 'literary' knowledge that Jones's study traces through the history of criticism and theory. His book will make critics - Wordsworthians, Romanticists , and theorists alike - crucially aware ofwhatis at stake in the ongoing struggle of interpretation in the 'Lucy Poems.' (J. DOUGLAS KNEALE) John M. Robson. Marriage or Celibacy?: The 'Daily Telegraph' on a Victorian Dilemma University of Toronto Press. x, 366. $60.00, $29.95 ProfessorJohn Robson died shortly afterMarriage orCelibacy? appeared. He was a distinguished scholar, the General and Textual Editor ofThe Collected Works ofJohn Stuart Mill, and a University Professor at the University of Toronto; the list of his solid books and articles runs to many pages. In addition to that scholarly solidity, scattered through his bibliography are examples of Robson as a humorist. His humour always displayed his interest in what might be described as the perversities of language and the somewhat arcane turns of the peculiarities of history and of our own culture. This interest in the 'lightness' of life frequently informed his most serious work. A most humane man, sympathetic and understanding of his subjects, Robson was nevertheless capable of a certain detachment when taking the long view, a detachment that gave his analysis a sharp edge. The framework of Marriage or Celibacy? consists of a series of letters and leading articles chiefly from the Daily Telegraph in June and July of 1868 with some from The Times a decade earlier. The dilemma posed by the book's title is one between an early and impecunious marriage and a marriage indefinitely postponed or abandoned altogether. Robson focuses on the Telegraph, which he sees as initiating a form of persuasive and popular journalism new to the times and not unrelated to the talk shows of contemporary radio. The series deals with three topics closely related. The first is represented by a leading article in the Telegraph of 16 June 1868, HUMANITIES 349 discussing the case of a young Belgian girl lured to prostitution in London; the second, letters and leaders under the general heading of 'Marriage or Celihacy,' is concerned with the difficulties of marriage on a limited income; and the last continues the subject of the second but changes the topic to emigration. A short quotation of twelve lines from the first leader contains thirteen instances of words like 'infamous,' 'horrible,' and 'hideous,' and continues, as Robson points out, to u~e commercial metaphors ironically in describing the trade, metaphors that he sees as applicable to the series as a whole. After the opening of the series, however, the topic of prostitution remains in the background to be seen only in relation to the pent-up desires of men denied a prudent marriage early in life. The entire series as transcribed in Robson's own notes runs to some six hundred double-spaced pages or about 150,000 words, providing him with ample opportunity for analysis. The surface argument in the letters from both men and women centres on the problems of marrying on a limited income. The limits, of course, vary depending on the circumstances of the correspondents and the ways in which they are able to cut their coats according...