TABLE
OF CONTENTS GREVE/GROVE'S OTHER
PSEUDONYMS TITLE/MAIN
PAGE
For
the very complex choice of the title "Fanny Essler" and
an identical joint pseudonym for Else and himself, Greve
must have been responsible. Though only two other pseudonyms,
F. C. Gerden and Konrad Thorer,[34] are
attested in his Insel correspondence, he assumed such a
wide range of identities for publications and travels alike
that Wolfskehl refers to him as a "Pseudologe" in
1902 (Wk,1938). To some extent, Grove maintained the old-standing
habit. The foremost and cleverest pseudonym he adopted
for his Canadian identity in 1912: with the elegant, minor
change from an "e" to an "o", and two
different given names, he shed his previous existence,
while maintaining his beloved initials "FPG".
When he submitted a list
of publications in support of his nomination for the Royal
Society of Canada, he stated that "there are a few
other anonymous or pseudonymous ... boks published under
a mask" (Letters,
341). When he placed his very first Canadian work, the
sprawling essay "Rousseau als Erzieher" in Der
Nordwesten in 1914, he simply signed "Fred Grove".
Eight years later, when he was about to publish his first
Canadian book, the nature essays Over Prairie Trails,
in 1922, he toyed with the idea of using the name "Andrew
Rutherford" as a pseudonym (Pacey, 1976, xxv).
This very name turns out to be a far more imaginative choice. It also appears
in relation with the title page of his unfinished novel typescript, Jane
Atkinson -- "by
Andrew R. Rutherford". In this text, Grove repeats the following cameo
scene from his 1905 Fanny Essler novel: Jane treasures a tortoise-shell
comb remaindered from a maiden aunt's variety store on Toronto's Yonge Street
-- Fanny/Else's aunt, Adele Blaurock, operates just such a shop on Berlin's
Friedrichstrasse, and tortoise-shell combs are mentioned as unsalable items
in that context as well.
The fictitious Rutherford
name is actually a veiled biographical reference to the
maternal Scottish grandfather of Greve's former friend
Herman Kilian, whose name was Andrew Rutherford-Clark,
and whose daughter's first name was Jane (Pacey, 1974, n.15). Given that
the projected Rutherford pseudonym also plays an important
role in Grove's fake Canadian biography, in which he
appropriates Kilian's entire family background for himself, it is
charged with almost as many intricate and multilayered
connections as Greve's "Fanny Essler" pseudonym
was some twenty years earlier.
Similarly, the title
of Grove's lost novel Felix Powell's
Career, "a college story with a multiple sexual theme" (Letters,
386), condenses artfully Greve's first names "Felix Paul" and
his first Meredith translation, Beauchamp's
Career which he had undertaken three decades earlier, in 1904. It
remained unpublished, unlike several other, less daring, Meredith translations.
Direct
reflections of Else are understandably lacking in Grove's
records. He once made an oblique reference to her and Palermo
(ASA, 10), and the Broegler episode (ISM 134 ff.), which
describes his seduction at the tender age of 17 by the
wife of a teacher at the famed Gymnasium Johanneum in Hamburg,
may have been partly inspired by Else who was, however,
only five years older. The seduction is described also
in Grove's second confessional letter to his
fellow teacher Warkentin in Manitoba (the first letter
was in German), with the additional information, that young
FPG was dragged into public divorce proceedings as a
consequence (Letters,
11).
Else's preference for
Greve in late 1902 had long-lasting legal consequences
even after the annulment of her marriage to Endell in late
January, 1904 (Letters, 552, n.
1). As usual, Grove seems to have combined several related
events. Difficulties are mentioned at the time by Else
(Ab 126 ff.), and in Greve's correspondence with O. A.
H. Schmitz. His enigmatic words in December 1906 are: "Ich
habe soeben Nachricht erhalten, daß man nach angestellten
Recherchen im Begriff steht, die Hindernisse einer Legalisierung
meiner Ehe zu beseitigen"(14.12.06).[35] In
Reichel's substantial thesis about Endell, there is conspicuous
silence about Endell's first marriage, and several trips
to Italy in 1903 are explained with renal complications
(74). No reason is given why his second marriage to Anna
Meyn, to whom Endell became engaged in 1904 already,
was delayed until January, 1909 (78). Veiled, but striking
links to Endell are obvious in Grove's choice of a monogram
in 1939 "which
an artist friend designed for me decades ago" (Letters,
345; ill., 350). It adorns the cover of In Search
of Myself (1946), and reflects the same gothic style
evident in the Endells' monogram on Else Ti's stationary
in 1901 (Stadtarchiv München). Grove, by the way,
often addressed his wife Catherine with "Tee" which
matches Else's "Ti" (Ab
38) in sound and in meaning. Pacey comments: "This
endearment which, Mrs. Grove states, her husband told
her meant 'mistress' in Chinese, he uses only in letters
addressed to her -- and, very occasionally in reference
to her elsewhere" (Pacey,
1976, 83).
NOTES:
[34]A
Faustian self-representation in epic form, "Konrad,
the Builder," appears in Grove's poetry notebook
(PEd 164-174).
[35]Spettigue
mistranslates the future implied in "im Begriff stehen" as
a fait accompli: "...that the impediment to a legalizing
of my marriage is removed."(1992, p. 25)
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