Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Peter Taylor
"Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time" by Peter Taylor explores the eccentric lives of the Dorset siblings, Alfred and Louisa, who reside in the unconventional community of Chatham's West Vesey Place. The Dorsets, once part of a "first family," embrace a peculiar lifestyle that defies societal norms, often appearing in public in nightclothes and engaging in odd rituals. They maintain a quirky social standing rooted in family values rather than wealth, subsisting on fig-growing and crafting paper flowers. A key focus of their social life is an annual party for local pre-debutantes, which has evolved into a bizarre rite of passage for the children of the community.
The narrative reaches a turning point with the arrival of Ned and Emily Meriwether, whose attendance at the party leads to an unexpected and disruptive series of events stemming from a prank involving a non-resident boy, Tom Bascomb. The consequences of this prank unravel the Dorsets’ delusions about social status and youth, culminating in a heartbreaking fallout that alters the relationships between the Meriwether siblings and the Dorset family. The story underscores themes of identity, social perception, and the often painful transition from childhood innocence to the complexities of adult relationships.
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Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time by Peter Taylor
First published: 1958
Type of plot: Satire
Time of work: The early 1930's
Locale: Chatham, a fictional city on the northwestern edge of the American South
Principal Characters:
Mr. Alfred Dorset , an eccentric elderly bachelorMiss Louisa Dorset , his equally eccentric spinster sisterNed Meriwether , the fourteen-year-old son of an upper-middle-class familyEmily Meriwether , his thirteen-year-old sisterTom Bascomb , the paperboy and an uninvited guest
The Story
To the conventional "establishment" community of Chatham's West Vesey Place, the Dorsets are definitely peculiar. They are seen shopping in public places wearing bedroom slippers or with the cuffs of a nightdress hanging down beneath daytime clothing. Mr. Dorset washes his own car, not in the driveway or in the garage but in the street of West Vesey Place. Miss Dorset not only appears on her front terrace at midday in her bathrobe but also has been seen (through the tiny glass panels surrounding the front door) doing her housecleaning in the nude. Their home was once a mansion, but to reduce their taxes, they ripped off the third floor, tore down the south wing, and disconnected some of the plumbing—not bothering to conceal the resulting scars. Nevertheless, they are the last two of a Chatham "first family," and in a community that prizes family above fortune, their social standing is not to be questioned.
The Dorsets were orphaned while still in their teens; afterward, they not only refused any opportunity to marry but also deliberately cut themselves off from wealthy relatives who had moved away from the town. They subsist in an odd fashion: Mr. Dorset grows figs, plentiful but juiceless, and Miss Dorset makes paper flowers, plentiful but artless, which they sell to those members of the community whom they count as their peers. Their single social gesture is an annual dancing party for the pubescent children of suitable families, and the parties have become a predebutante ritual, which all the children must undergo but which give some of them nightmares.
Arrangements for the parties are as strange as the Dorsets. Alfred goes around the neighborhood in his old car, collecting the juvenile guests; no adults have been inside the house for twenty years. Alfred and Louisa are always garbed in the latest fashion of tuxedo or ball gown, none of them ever worn twice. The house is festooned with paper flowers (perhaps to be sold later), with reproductions of somewhat lubricious artworks such as Auguste Rodin's The Kiss and Il Bronzino's Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, with lighting designed to emphasize the artworks. The Dorsets are inclined to notice and to nudge each other when they see the children paying particular attention to the prints and statues. The high point of the parties is a tour of the house, during which the Dorsets talk about their past social triumphs and display ancestral evening wear that they keep in glass cases. The only dancing is done by Alfred and Louisa, to Victrola music, while the children watch. When not dancing, they keep up a running dialogue about being wellborn, being young together, believing that "love can make us all young forever."
There comes a year when Ned and Emily Meriwether are of a proper age to be invited, and the Dorsets arrange a party to end all parties. It starts as a small, adolescent practical joke, merely a plan to smuggle in Tom Bascomb as an extra guest. (Tom does not live in West Vesey Place and is not wellborn; he delivers the morning paper and once saw Miss Louisa doing her nude housecleaning one day when he came to collect.) However, the joke has repercussions that last for the rest of their lives.
Tom takes Ned's place in Mr. Dorset's old car; Ned walks to the Dorset house and slips in with a group of guests. As the tour of the house progresses, Tom and Emily put on a great show of affection; he kisses her ears and the tip of her nose, and they embrace and pose among the flowers in front of the Rodin replica. Mr. Dorset and Miss Louisa are delighted by the show, which proves to them that love can "make us all young forever." However, Ned's reaction is something he has not foreseen: He cannot bear the sight of his sister cuddling with Tom. Finally, he cries out in pain: "Don't you know? . . . They're brother and sister!" The other children, taking this to be the punch line for the joke, laugh aloud.
However, the Dorsets do not turn on the incestuous pair. They turn on Ned, whom they thought to be Tom, saying that they knew all along that he did not belong among the wellborn. Ned flees up the front stairs, pursued by Mr. Dorset, down the back stairs, where he confronts Miss Dorset, up the front stairs again—until he is finally cornered and locked in one of the dismantled bathrooms. Tom, claiming to be Ned, offers to call the police and calls the Meriwether parents instead. Then he slips out the back door.
The aftermath of the joke is much more sad than comic. The hapless Dorsets, unwilling to believe that they cannot tell the wellborn from the paperboy, believe that the Meriwether parents as well as all the children are being mischievous. At last convinced of their error, they simply withdraw to their rooms and leave the bewildered parents to close the house and see the children home.
Ned and Emily are sent off to boarding schools; they never regain their childhood intimacy, and later they become indifferent or even antagonistic to each other. Chatham's children are free forever from Dorset dancing parties.