I had long ago realized that Professor Mae Leslie identified strongly with the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett. She looked like Barrett and dressed like Barrett. Like Barrett's, her hair dangled in long ringlets about a pale but lively face. Like the poet, she wore no make-up. She out-Barretted Barrett in one respect: an adolescent maltreated bout with polio confined her to a wheelchair, which she maneuvered with great skill and energy. As we know, the British poet had a spinal problem and was in bed a lot, but she was certainly ambulatory on her wedding day. Which brings me to the next similarity: both women (in their own way, and in their own time) loved Robert Browning.
And I loved Mae Leslie. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! First as a beautiful woman. Consider the stark black hair, artfully contrived into those curls. The flashing green eyes. The naturally red lips between the translucent cheeks. That body. I imagined marvelous breasts, smooth, semi-firm, capped by roseate buds. Then the erotic sweep of belly. Her hands were sonnets. And yet she was virginal. I doubted that any male hand had ever been laid on her in lust. What a waste!
For years I had gone to sleep thinking of her. She was older than I by six or seven years. It didn't matter to me. Her erudition was formidable, but that didn't matter either. Recognized authority on minor Victorian poets. She had written books. She lectured by video terminal all over the world: Oxford, the Sorbonne, Moscow U., and (would you believe it!) M.I.T.
She knew something about everything. The universal doctor. She could even hold her own when we discussed my undergraduate specialty, which was quantum physics, and how certain theoretical sub-particles could move forward and backward along a time axis (the "Feynman minuet"). She appreciated me. She encouraged me. As my senior year in college closed, she helped me get the graduate scholarship.
Aye, there's the rub.
So here we were in her little office in the Fine Arts Building, once again after all these years, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.
The Browning paper.
)
His college paper on Browning is literally years late. What's a physicist to do?
