Review of
Laura May Venice's "Laura"
Copyright Richard Schwartz, 2001
The book under review is a carefully researched
hoax. It must be. Laura May Venice was a well
regarded biologist around the turn of the last
century. She wrote a series of influental
articles on social insects in the
1890's. Following the publication of
her last article in 1897, which veered off in the
direction of speculation, she vanished from the
scientific scene.
The author of this work claims to be
Laura May Venice - not her grand-daughter, not
her great-great-grand-daughter,
but the original! Actually, if we are to take
this work at face value, the situation is vastly
more complicated and what we have said
so far hopelessly misleading.
According to the author (whoever it may be)
``Laura May Venice'' is a
constructed entity, the product of a
collaboration between two
Cambridge undergraduates, Laura May and Laura
Venice. Like all claims in the book, this
one is consistent with what is known of the
facts. Cambridge University records show that
students named Laura May and
Laura Venice entered the university
in September 1884.
The same records show that both students
withdrew in June 1886, having completed
all but the last year of their studies.
Finally, the records show that a
student named Laura May Venice returned to the
University in October 1886.
The book interpolates between these spare
details: The two Lauras
lived in the same college at
the university and became fast friends
once they discovered that they shared
similar backgrounds and interests.
They both grew up in
affluent, intellectual households, and
had little formal education. Unburdened
by the usual strictures
associated with schooling, they
read widely on their own. Bookish,
intense, and educated far beyond their years,
the two Lauras had no friends whatsoever
until they found each other at Cambridge.
Laura Venice had a
cousin, Stephen Venice, two years her
senior. In the book he is described as a
weak-willed, acquiescent young man.
To make a long story short, the two
Lauras persuaded Stephen Venice to
marry Laura May, even though the
two ``lovers'' had no interest at all
in each other. The marriage was
conducted in secret, in
July 1886.
The union existed solely on paper,
in the form of a court document.
The court document enabled
Laura May to change her legal name to
Laura May Venice. The two Lauras and
Stephen rented a flat on the outskirts of
Cambridge for the 1886 academic year.
Laura May Venice re-enrolled in the
university and completed her studies
while Laura Venice formally withdrew.
The Cambridge University Records show that
Laura May Venice completed her undergraduate
studies in spectacular
fashion, taking nearly double the usual load.
Her prodigious accomplishments earned her an
invitation to continue her studies at
Cambridge, carrying out graduate work
in biology. One speculates that
Laura May Venice, already a brilliant
student, further blossomed in her last year.
In light of her future accomplishments as
a scientist, such an explanation would not be
completely unreasonable; the annals
of science are littered with cases like this.
In the book it is explained simply that the
two Lauras split the coursework between them.
They carefully coordinated their
schedules so that they were never seen
at the same time. They methodically exaggerated the
natural resemblence they bore to one
another, amalgamating their wardrobes,
dying their hair the same color, wearing the
same hairstyle, and so forth.
They wore large hats and identical pairs of
thick, ornate glasses. They hid behind scarves and
shawls. They copied each other's mannerisms,
trained their voices to match, affected the
same gait. Nobody got close enough to them
to discover the subterfuge.
It seemed unlikely that the scheme could be
continued into the more intimate setting
of graduate studies, but for one semester
it was continued. Following that semester,
in the spring of 1888, Laura May Venice proposed
to do her fieldwork in the United States.
The carefully argued proposal was not entirely
unprecedented, and after some deliberation on
the part of the faculty it was granted.
Supported by a generous
research stipend, the two Lauras and Stephen
left for the United States in May 1888,
seeking to settle in a remote, unpopulated
area.
On Page 104 it is said
``Together with Stephen we
set sail for the United States on
17 May 1888.'' On Page 106 it is said
``I took up residence on
the outskirts of Bismarck, North Dakota,
in an austere but confortable farmhouse.''
It is clear from the context that ``I''
refers to the two Lauras. Stephen
Venice is never mentioned again.
With the vanishing of Stephen Venice - and the
concomitant changing of ``we'' to ``I'' - the reader
is led into the deep waters of the book.
It is no longer possible to distinguish
the separate identities of the two Lauras.
There is only ``Laura''. As if unhooked from
a mooring,
the writing in the book begins
to change character. Previously a linear account of things,
the narrative gradually evolves into a kind of
kaleidescope presentation.
Laura speaks neither about the completion of
her fieldwork nor about her steady rise in stature
as an insect biologist. This information
can be found in the
annals of biology, so to speak,
and we shall not
detail it here.
The interested reader can still find her articles,
a few of which have become classics, in
practically any university biology library.
It is worth noting that
hers was an unusually isolated and short-lived career.
She never collaborated with other scientists,
rarely cited other work in her articles,
never attended conferences,
and never held a university position.
It is impossible to tell, either from
the book or from public records, how
she supported herself at the time. One
presumes that she inherited a sizeable
amount of money from her parents or from
other relatives.
The hospital in Bismarck records the birth of
a baby girl,
Laura May Venice, on 4 September 1894. The
mother is listed as Laura May Venice and no
father is listed. In the book Laura says that she
had a total of eight daughters.
She says gave birth to the first daughter
on 4 September 1894, as is consistent with
hospital records, and to the
last on 21 March 1899.
Medical records do not exist for the seven
additional babies. If one is to
believe the book, the babies were born at home and
in secrecy. We can surmise that Laura learned
the birthing procedure from the first experience and
carried out the remaining procedures herself, without
the aid of
a hospital.
All eight girls were named Laura May Venice;
no fathers are mentioned.
Speaking generally, there is a kind of
Faustian bargain a more established person
can offer to a less established person.
Prestige is offered in return for
self-negation. For instance,
this bargain is made all the time,
to a greater or lesser extent, in business
and politics. A young employee is groomed
for, and promoted to, an executive position at an early age,
but then serves as a puppet for the more
experienced person who facilitated the
promotion. Political leaders have
proteges who ultimately land in high sounding
but essentially powerless positions.
In theory, such a bargain could be made
in the context of child-raising.
Very young children imitate their parents all
the time. They pretend to go to work,
for example, or to talk on the telephone
with friends.
What child does not wish to be her parents, at
some stage? The offer is this: The child
is allowed to identify with the parent completely,
to count the actions and accomplishments of
the parent as her own. The child becomes a
kind of ``external terminal'' of the parent,
a kind of appendix, managed from afar but
nominally given the same status as the manager.
One can hardly imagine the ghastly
consequences of an arrangement like this.
From birth, Laura read to her children,
saturated them with classical music, exposed
them to mathematical
patterns and progressions. Pushed and pulled into a
preternaturally early rationality, each baby
was raised as a subsidiary of Laura, a
unit in a functioning whole. Encouraged
(or forced?) to read the same books read
by Laura, the daughters
shared all they knew with each other and
with Laura.
At first Laura speaks about
``my children'' or ``my third Laura'', say, but
gradually the language changes. By 1902
she speaks of ``my younger selves'' and
``my other eyes and ears''.
By 1905 she simply says ``I''.
From 1914 to 1915 McConnell and
Sons, a prosperous Bismarck construction
company still in business today, extensively
renovated the farm whose registered owner
was Laura May Venice. Among other renovations,
they added extra rooms onto
the existing house and converted the barn into
another house. All of this is
carefully detailed in the records of McConnell
and Sons, which stretch back
nearly a century. Laura does not
mention these renovations, though we
can imagine that their purpose was to
accommodate a growing ``family''.
Laura again speaks of ``my babies''
in 1916. As with the previous ``generation'',
the new generation of Lauras is methodically
pushed into an early rationality. This
generation is educated as intensely as the
original, but much more narrowly.
Encouraged or forced to
devour books at a bewildering pace, each child
is channelled into a specific area.
One studies chemistry, one philosophy, one
mathematics, and so forth. Once again, the
children function as components of a whole,
sharing their specialized knowledge extensively
with each other.
Regarding the status of
these new children, the same evolution of
language happens again; by 1918 Laura only
speaks of ``I'' and never again mentions
the second generation.
The process of reproduction and consolidation goes
through repeated iterations, with the basic
cycle repeating roughly every thirteen years.
No mention is ever made of fathers, or of male
babies. No medical records exist for the babies,
though the growth corresponds with public real
estate records which show
that Laura May Venice purchased
neighboring farms and similarly developed them.
To give
the reader some feel for the evolving nature
of education given to an individual unit we
reproduce Laura's account of the training given
to ``one of my Lauras'' in 1956:
``I taught the
infant to distinguish between the primary
colors by the careful withholding of food.
By her first year she could distinguish not
just the primary colors, but thirteen different
hues of red. Laura could also tell
mauve from purple,
lime from chartreuse. By
her second year Laura could distinguish
fifty-seven different hues of red,
thirty-nine different hues of purple, and
nineteen hues of yellow...''
The narrative
continues in this vein, but becomes incomprehensible,
due to the use of private names for
colors, such as ``infra-vermillion'' and
``sand vermillion 4''. Similar accounts
from this time period are given with
respect to sound perception, taste, and
so forth. In all cases, the account
devolves into incomprehensibility, due to the
use of private names which make distinctions
between seemingly identical things.
Properly speaking, there is only one ``event'' in
this book. On 7 April 1966 a young reporter
named Gary Tillson conducted an ``interview'' with
a representative for the women who
owned the cluster of farms.
Over the years the area surrounding
the farms had become incorporated into a
township. The other residents of the town
grew suspicious of the large collection of
women who lived amongst them but did
not interact with them in any way.
People suspected that
the group was a cult. Tillson
was elected, more or less, to do an interview.
Tillson never published his interview, but
he assured the people in town that the group
was harmless. In
1991 he published a short account of
his experience in
``New Modes'', a New Age periodical:
``I arrived at one of the farms and saw dozens
of women, young girls mainly, buzzing around
the place like bees. For the most part they
paid not the slightest attention to me, absorbed
as they were in various tasks. Every once
in a while a very young girl would come up to
me and stare intently at me. Sometimes these
young girls touched me, or looked especially
hard into my eyes. One spoke to me and said
``Say hello, say hello, say hello'' over and
over again until I said it. Once I said
hello she vanished into the background.
``After thirty or forty minutes had passed like this I
got the general impression that my presence on
the farm had registered. A graceful woman in
her mid-thirties approached me and asked me
my business. I told her that the people in
town had finally become interested in them,
and that I would like to interview her, or
rather the owner of the farm.
She explained to me that the people on the
farm were a non-religious collective, dedicated
to simple hard work and quiet contemplation.
Everyone on the farm had either come
voluntarily, or was the offspring of someone
who had come voluntarily. She said that
the collective was protected under the
government's freedom of assembly provisions, and
that the collective lived within the laws and
standards of the community.
``When I pressed her for more details she said nothing.
When I asked her if I could speak to someone else
at the farm, she said that she was the public
representative for the collective, and that
it would be impossible to speak with anyone else.
As she led me off the
premises, I had the eerie feeling that she had
been trained for encounters like this, like
an actress, and perhaps did not even
understand the words she had used.
I did not want to start an avalanche of
events that could destroy this unusual
group of women and so I
never wrote the article.''
Laura's account of the interview takes over
a hundred pages.
She notes the wind speed
at the time of the visit, the angle that the
sunlight makes with the ground.
Two pages are devoted
to a description of Tillson's palms, and the way they
sweated.
Four pages are devoted to a description of
his right iris. A million little details
are presented like this. It is as if a short
interval in time has been frozen and duly recorded.
Without any justification certain emotions
are ascribed to Tillson; these are elaborated upon
with a clinical precision.
When carefully analyzed, the reader sees that
Laura's account of the interview matches
Tillson's account exactly, whenever it is
possible to compare them. Laura's account
{\it contains\/} Tillson's account - as a symphony
contains a smattering of its notes.
The latter part of the book contains a number
of descriptions like this, each presented as
a sort of entry in a journal. The descriptions
from the 1960s are still somewhat
comprehensible. Putting aside the undue
precision, the kaleidescope presentation,
the frequent use of private terminology,
one can see that a particular emotion is
being described, say, or a certain carbon
compound, or a mechanical device.
The descriptions from the 1970s are
enigmatic, spooky. They hover just
out of reach, for the most part.
Every once in a while the reader feels a
remote connection to what Laura says.
One has the impression, for instance,
that on 14 September 1973 Laura was contemplating
how a tree-like thing feels to its bark,
though a tree is not explicitly mentioned.
On 22 May 1974 Laura seems to
describe the longing a mind feels for itself
when it is separated from itself by a
short interval in time. In this passage
one is given the general impression of a
bridge suspended between two
incarnations of the same mind.
Unexpectedly, there is a completely lucid
passage dated 9 October 1977
in which Laura describes an enormous ball of
space. The black and featureless space is filled with
countless blue bubbles. Each bubble expands slowly,
its center fixed in one spot, until finally it
pops.
As soon as one pops another one appears
somewhere else in the space and expands anew.
Against this slow and stately evolution,
yellow beams of light dart from bubble
to bubble, filling up the giant ball of space like a
tapestry.
As Laura describes things and events beyond 1980
her writing becomes an ocean of incomprehensibility.
It seems not to be gibberish, however.
Unable to penetrate into the substance of the writing
this reviewer tried to listen to its song. This
is hard to express exactly:
Cut loose from any
discernible meaning the writing takes on a kind of
a majestic cadence - one imagines
a horse transitioning from a trot into a gallop
or a candle gaining a steady flame after its
initial sputtering.
Wading through the last hundred pages of Laura's
unearthly narrative,
one senses the promise of meaning if not
the presence of meaning. Down to
the last sentence the writing teases the mind,
like a name that cannot be recalled or a story
told in a voice too soft or swift to hear. One is
given the impression, finally, of a letter
written in an alien language, or a call backwards from
an unknown future.