After the age of 31 Barnfield wrote no more, but, being in easy circumstances, retired to his beautiful manor house and country estate in Shropshire, lived there for twenty years and died leaving a wife and son.[85] It seems probable that he was of bisexual temperament, and that, as not infrequently happens in such cases, the homosexual element developed early under the influence of a classical education and university associations, while the normal heterosexual element developed later and, as may happen in bisexual persons, was associated with the more commonplace and prosaic side of life. Barnfield was only a genuine poet on the homosexual side of his nature.
Greater men of that age than Barnfield may be suspected of homosexual tendencies. Marlowe, whose most powerful drama, _Edward II_, is devoted to a picture of the relations between that king and his minions, is himself suspected of homosexuality. An ignorant informer brought certain charges of freethought and criminality against him, and further accused him of asserting that they are fools who love not boys. These charges have doubtless been colored by the vulgar channel through which they passed, but it seems absolutely impossible to regard them as the inventions of a mere gallows-bird such as this informer was.[86] Moreover, Marlowe's poetic work, while it shows him by no means insensitive to the beauty of women, also reveals a special and peculiar sensitiveness to masculine beauty. Marlowe clearly had a reckless delight in all things unlawful, and it seems probable that he possessed the bisexual temperament. Shakespeare has also been discussed from this point of view. All that can be said, however, is that he addressed a long series of sonnets to a youthful male friend. These sonnets are written in lover's language of a very tender and noble order. They do not appear to imply any relationship that the writer regarded as shameful or that would be so regarded by the world. Moreover, they seem to represent but a single episode in the life of a very sensitive, many-sided nature.[87] There is no other evidence in Shakespeare's work of homosexual instinct such as we may trace throughout Marlowe's, while there is abundant evidence of a constant preoccupation with women.
While Shakespeare thus narrowly escapes inclusion in the list of distinguished inverts, there is much better ground for the inclusion of his great contemporary, Francis Bacon. Aubrey in his laboriously compiled _Short Lives_, in which he shows a friendly and admiring attitude toward Bacon, definitely states that he was a pederast. Aubrey was only a careful gleaner of frequently authentic gossip, but a similar statement is made by Sir Simonds D'Ewes in his _Autobiography_. D'Ewes, whose family belonged to the same part of Suffolk as Bacon's sprang from, was not friendly to Bacon, but that fact will not suffice to account for his statement. He was an upright and honorable man of scholarly habits, and, moreover, a trained lawyer, who had many opportunities of obtaining first-hand information, for he had lived in the Chancery office from childhood. He is very precise as to Bacon's homosexual practices with his own servants, both before and after his fall, and even gives the name of a "very effeminate-faced youth" who was his "catamite and bedfellow"; he states, further, that there had been some question of bringing Bacon to trial for sodomy. These allegations may be supported by a letter of Bacon's own mother (printed in Spedding's _Life of Bacon_), reproving him on account of what she had heard concerning his behavior with the young Welshmen in his service whom he made his bedfellows. It is notable that Bacon seems to have been specially attracted to Welshmen (one might even find evidence of this in the life of the Welshman, Henry VII), a people of vivacious temperament unlike his own; this is illustrated by his long and intimate friendship with the mercurial Sir Toby Mathew, his "alter ego," a man of dissipated habits in early life, though we are not told that he was homosexual. Bacon had many friendships with men, but there is no evidence that he was ever in love or cherished any affectionate intimacy with a woman. Women play no part at all in his life. His marriage, which was childless, took place at the mature age of 46; it was effected in a business-like manner, and though he always treated his wife with formal consideration it is probable that he neglected her, and certain that he failed to secure her devotion; it is clear that toward the end of Bacon's life she formed a relationship with her gentleman usher, whom subsequently she married. Bacon's writings, it may be added, equally with his letters, show no evidence of love or attraction to women; in his _Essays_ he is brief and judicial on the subject of Marriage, copious and eloquent on the subject of Friendship, while the essay on Beauty deals exclusively with masculine beauty.
During the first half of the eighteenth century we have clear evidence that homosexuality flourished in London with the features which it presents today in all large cities everywhere. There was a generally known name, "Mollies," applied to homosexual persons, evidently having reference to their frequently feminine characteristics; there were houses of private resort for them ("Molly houses"), there were special public places of rendezvous whither they went in search of adventure, exactly as there are today. A walk in Upper Moorfields was especially frequented by the homosexual about 1725. A detective employed by the police about that date gave evidence as follows at the Old Bailey; "I takes a turn that way and leans over the wall. In a little time the prisoner passes by, and looks hard at me, and at a small distance from me stands up against the wall as if he was going to make water. Then by degrees he siddles nearer and nearer to where I stood, till at last he was close to me. 'Tis a very fine night,' says he. 'Aye,' say I, 'and so it is.' Then he takes me by the hand, and after squeezing and playing with it a little, he conveys it to his breeches," whereupon the detective seizes the man by his sexual organs and holds him until the constable comes up and effects an arrest.
At the same period Margaret Clap, commonly called Mother Clap, kept a house in Field Lane, Holborn, which was a noted resort of the homosexual. To Mother Clap's Molly-house 30 or 40 clients would resort every night; on Sunday there might be as many as 50, for, as in Berlin and other cities today, that was the great homosexual gala night; there were beds in every room in this house. We are told that the "men would sit in one another's laps, kissing in a lewd manner and using their hands indecently. Then they would get up, dance and make curtsies, and mimic the voices of women, 'Oh, fie, sir,'--'Pray, sir,'--'Dear sir,'--'Lord, how can you serve me so?'--'I swear I'll cry out,'--'You're a wicked devil,'--'And you're a bold face,'--'Eh, ye dear little toad,'--'Come, bus.' They'd hug and play and toy and go out by couples into another room, on the same floor, to be 'married,' as they called it."
On the whole one gains the impression that homosexual practices were more prevalent in London in the eighteenth century, bearing in mind its population at that time, than they are today.[88] It must not, however, be supposed that the law was indulgent and its administration lax. The very reverse was the case. The punishment for sodomy, when completely effected, was death, and it was frequently inflicted. Homosexual intercourse, without evidence of penetration, was regarded as "attempt" and was usually punished by the pillory and a heavy fine, followed by two years' imprisonment. Moreover, it would appear that more activity was shown by the police in prosecution than is nowadays the case; this is, for instance, suggested by the evidence of the detective already quoted.
To keep a homosexual resort was also a severely punishable offense. Mother Clap was charged at the Old Bailey in 1726 with "keeping a sodomitical house"; she protested that she could not herself have taken part in these practices, but that availed her nothing; she could bring forward no witnesses on her behalf and was condemned to pay a fine, to stand in the pillory, and to undergo imprisonment for two years. The cases were dealt with in a matter-of-fact way which seems to bear further witness to the frequency of the offense, and with no effort to expend any specially vindictive harshness on this class of offenders. If there was the slightest doubt as to the facts, even though the balance of evidence was against the accused, he was usually acquitted, and the man who could bring witnesses to his general good character might often thereby escape. In 1721 a religious young man, married, was convicted of attempting sodomy with two young men he slept with; he was fined, placed in the pillory and imprisoned for two months. Next year a man was acquitted on a similar charge, and another man, of decent aspect, although the evidence indicated that he might have been guilty of sodomy, was only convicted of attempt, and sentenced to fine, pillory, and two years' imprisonment. In 1723, again, a schoolmaster was acquitted, on account of his good reputation, of the charge of attempt on a boy of 15, his pupil, though the evidence seemed decidedly against him. In 1730 a man was sentenced to death for sodomy effected on his young apprentice; this was a bad case and the surgeon's evidence indicated laceration of the perineum. Homosexuality of all kinds flourished, it will be seen, notwithstanding the fearless yet fair application of a very severe law.[89] In more recent times Byron has frequently been referred to as experiencing homosexual affections, and I have been informed that some of his poems nominally addressed to women were really inspired by men. It is certain that he experienced very strong emotions toward his male friends. "My school-friendships," he wrote, "were with me passions." When he afterward met one of these friends, Lord Clare, in Italy, he was painfully agitated; and could never hear the name without a beating of the heart. At the age of 22 he formed one of his strong attachments for a youth to whom he left £7000 in his will.[90] It is probable, however, that here, as well as in the case of Shakespeare, and in that of Tennyson's love for his youthful friend, Arthur Hallam, as well as of Montaigne for Etienne de la Boëtie, although such strong friendships may involve an element of sexual emotion, we have no true and definite homosexual impulse; homosexuality is merely simulated by the ardent and hyperesthetic emotions of the poet.[91] The same quality of the poet's emotional temperament may doubtless, also, be invoked in the case of Goethe, who is said to have written elegies which, on account of their homosexual character, still remain unpublished.
The most famous homosexual trial of recent times in England was that of Oscar Wilde, a writer whose literary reputation may be said to be still growing, not only in England but throughout the world. Wilde was the son of parents who were both of unusual ability and somewhat eccentric. Both these tendencies became in him more concentrated. He was born with, as it were, a congenital antipathy to the commonplace, a natural love of paradox, and he possessed the skill to embody the characteristic in finished literary form. At the same time, it must not be forgotten, beneath this natural attitude of paradox, his essential judgments on life and literature were usually sound and reasonable. His essay on "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" witnessed to his large and enlightened conception of life, and his profound admiration for Flaubert to the sanity and solidity of his literary taste. In early life he revealed no homosexual tendencies; he married and had children. After he had begun to outgrow his youthful esthetic extravagances, however, and to acquire success and fame, he developed what was at first a simply inquisitive interest in inversion. Such inquisitive interest is sometimes the sign of an emerging homosexual impulse. It proved to be so in Wilde's case and ultimately he was found to be cultivating the acquaintance of youths of low class and doubtful character. Although this development occurred comparatively late in life, we must hesitate to describe Wilde's homosexuality as acquired. If we consider his constitution and his history, it is not difficult to suppose that homosexual germs were present in a latent form from the first, and it may quite well be that Wilde's inversion was of that kind which is now described as retarded, though still congenital.
As is usual in England, no active efforts were made to implicate Wilde in any criminal charge. It was his own action, as even he himself seems to have vaguely realized beforehand, which brought the storm about his head. He was arrested, tried, condemned, and at once there arose a general howl of execration, joined in even by the judge, whose attitude compared unfavorably with the more impartial attitude of the eighteenth century judges in similar cases. Wilde came out of prison ambitious to retrieve his reputation by the quality of his literary work. But he left Reading gaol merely to enter a larger and colder prison. He soon realized that his spirit was broken even more than his health. He drifted at last to Paris, where he shortly after died, shunned by all but a few of his friends.[92] In a writer of the first order, Edward Fitzgerald, to whom we owe the immortal and highly individualized version of _Omar Khayyam_, it is easy to trace an element of homosexuality, though it appears never to have reached full and conscious development. Fitzgerald was an eccentric person who, though rich and on friendly terms with some of the most distinguished men of his time, was always out of harmony with his environment. He felt himself called on to marry, very unhappily, a woman whom he had never been in love with and with whom he had nothing in common. All his affections were for his male friends. In early life he was devoted to his friend W.K. Browne, whom he glorified in _Euphranor_. "To him Browne was at once Jonathan, Gamaliel, Apollo,--the friend, the master, the God,--there was scarcely a limit to his devotion and admiration."[93] On Browne's premature death Fitzgerald's heart was empty. In 1859 at Lowestoft, Fitzgerald, as he wrote to Mrs. Browne, "used to wander about the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost me who might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my heart." It was then that he met "Posh" (Joseph Fletcher), a fisherman, 6 feet tall, said to be of the best Suffolk type, both in body and character. Posh reminded Fitzgerald of his dead friend Browne; he made him captain of his lugger, and was thereafter devoted to him. Posh was, said Fitzgerald, "a man of the finest Saxon type, with a complexion _vif, mâle et flamboyant_, blue eyes, a nose less than Roman, more than Greek, and strictly auburn hair that any woman might envy. Further he was a man of simplicity; of soul, justice of thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of Nature's grandest type," in fact the "greatest man" Fitzgerald had ever met. Posh was not, however, quite so absolutely perfect as this description suggests, and various misunderstandings arose in consequence between the two friends so unequal in culture and social traditions. These difficulties are reflected in some of the yet extant letters from the enormous mass which Fitzgerald addressed to "my dear Poshy."[94] A great personality of recent times, widely regarded with reverence as the prophet-poet of Democracy[95]--Walt Whitman--has aroused discussion by his sympathetic attitude toward passionate friendship, or "manly love" as he calls it, in _Leaves of Grass_. In this book--in "Calamus," "Drumtaps," and elsewhere--Whitman celebrates a friendship in which physical contact and a kind of silent voluptuous emotion are essential elements. In order to settle the question as to the precise significance of "Calamus," J.A. Symonds wrote to Whitman, frankly posing the question. The answer (written from Camden, N.J., on August 19, 1890) is the only statement of Whitman's attitude toward homosexuality, and it is therefore desirable that it should be set on record:-- "About the questions on 'Calamus,' etc., they quite daze me. _Leaves of Grass_ is only to be rightly construed by and within its own atmosphere and essential character--all its pages and pieces so coming strictly under. That the 'Calamus' part has ever allowed the possibility of such construction as mentioned is terrible. I am fain to hope that the pages themselves are not to be even mentioned for such gratuitous and quite at the time undreamed and unwished possibility of morbid inferences--which are disavowed by me and seem damnable."
It would seem from this letter[96] that Whitman had never realized that there is any relationship whatever between the passionate emotion of physical contact from man to man, as he had experienced it and sung it, and the act which with other people he would regard as a crime against nature. This may be singular, for there are many inverted persons who have found satisfaction in friendships less physical and passionate than those described in _Leaves of Grass_, but Whitman was a man of concrete, emotional, instinctive temperament, lacking in analytical power, receptive to all influences, and careless of harmonizing them. He would most certainly have refused to admit that he was the subject of inverted sexuality. It remains true, however, that "manly love" occupies in his work a predominance which it would scarcely hold in the feelings of the "average man," whom Whitman wishes to honor. A normally constituted person, having assumed the very frank attitude taken up by Whitman, would be impelled to devote far more space and far more ardor to the subject of sexual relationships with women and all that is involved in maternity than is accorded to them in _Leaves of Grass_. Some of Whitman's extant letters to young men, though they do not throw definite light on this question, are of a very affectionate character,[97] and, although a man of remarkable physical vigor, he never felt inclined to marry.[98] It remains somewhat difficult to classify him from the sexual point of view, but we can scarcely fail to recognize the presence of a homosexual tendency.
I should add that some friends and admirers of Whitman are not prepared to accept the evidence of the letter to Symonds. I am indebted to "Q." for the following statement of the objections:-- "I think myself that it is a mistake to give much weight to this letter--perhaps a mistake to introduce it at all, since if introduced it will, of course, carry weight. And this for three or four reasons:-- "1. That it is difficult to reconcile the letter itself (with its strong tone of disapprobation) with the general 'atmosphere' of _Leaves of Grass_, the tenor of which is to leave everything open and free.
"2. That the letter is in hopeless conflict with the 'Calamus' section of poems. For, whatever moral lines Whitman may have drawn at the time of writing these poems, it seems to me quite incredible that the possibility of certain inferences, morbid or other, was undreamed of.
"3. That the letter was written only a few months before his last illness and death, and is the only expression of the kind that he appears to have given utterance to.
"4. That Symonds's letter, to which this was a reply, is not forth coming; and we consequently do not know what rash expressions it may have contained--leading Whitman (with his extreme caution) to hedge his name from possible use to justify dubious practices."
I may add that I endeavored to obtain Symonds's letter, but he was unable to produce it, nor has any copy of it been found among his papers.
It should be said that Whitman's attitude toward Symonds was marked by high regard and admiration. "A wonderful man is Addington Symonds," he remarked shortly before his own death; "some ways the most indicative and penetrating and significant man of our time. Symonds is a curious fellow; I love him dearly. He is of college breed and education, horribly literary and suspicious, and enjoys things. A great fellow for delving into persons and into the concrete, and even into the physiological and the gastric, and wonderfully cute." But on this occasion he delved in vain.
The foregoing remarks (substantially contained in the previous editions of this book) were based mainly on the information received from J.A. Symonds's side. But of more recent years interesting light has been thrown on this remarkable letter from Walt Whitman's side. The Boswellian patience, enthusiasm, and skill which Horace Traubel has brought to his full and elaborate work, now in course of publication, _With Walt Whitman in Camden_, clearly reveal, in the course of various conversations, Whitman's attitude to Symonds's question and the state of mind which led up to this letter.
Whitman talked to Traubel much about Symonds from the twenty-seventh of April, 1888 (very soon after the date when Traubel's work begins), onward. Symonds had written to him repeatedly, it seems, concerning the "passional relations of men with men," as Whitman expressed it. "He is always driving at me about that: is that what Calamus means?--because of me or in spite of me, is that what it means? I have said no, but no does not satisfy him. [There is, however, no record from Symonds's side of any letter by Whitman to Symonds in this sense up to this date.] But read this letter--read the whole of it: it is very shrewd, very cute, in deadliest earnest: it drives me hard, almost compels me--it is urgent, persistent: he sort of stands in the road and says 'I won't move till you answer my question.' You see, this is an old letter--sixteen years old--and he is still asking the question: he refers to it in one of his latest notes. He is surely a wonderful man--a rare, cleaned-up man--a white-souled, heroic character...You will be writing something about Calamus some day," said W. [to Traubel], "and this letter, and what I say, may help to clear your ideas. Calamus needs clear ideas; it may be easily, innocently distorted from its natural, its motive, body of doctrine."
The letter, dated Feb. 7, 1872, of some length, is then reproduced. It tells how much _Leaves of Grass_, and especially the Calamus section, had helped the writer. "What the love of man for man has been in the past," Symonds wrote, "I think I know. What it is here now, I know also--alas! What you say it can and should be I dimly discern in your Poems. But this hardly satisfies me--so desirous am I of learning what you teach. Some day, perhaps,--in some form, I know not what, but in your own chosen form,--you will tell me more about the Love of Friends. Till then I wait."
"Said W: 'Well, what do you think of that? Do you think that could be answered?' 'I don't see why you call that letter driving you hard. It's quiet enough--it only asks questions, and asks the questions mildly enough,' 'I suppose you are right--"drive" is not exactly the word: yet you know how I hate to be catechised. Symonds is right, no doubt, to ask the questions: I am just as much right if I do not answer them: just as much right if I do answer them. I often say to myself about Calamus--perhaps it means more or less than what I thought myself--means different: perhaps I don't know what it all means--perhaps never did know. My first instinct about all that Symonds writes is violently reactionary--is strong and brutal for no, no, no. Then the thought intervenes that I maybe do not know all my own meanings: I say to myself: "You, too, go away, come back, study your own book--as alien or stranger, study your own book, see what it amounts to." Some time or other I will have to write to him definitely about Calamus--give him my word for it what I meant or mean it to mean.'"
Again, a month later (May 24, 1888), Whitman speaks to Traubel of a "beautiful letter" from Symonds. "You will see that he harps on the Calamus poems again. I don't see why it should, but his recurrence to that subject irritates me a little. I suppose you might say--why don't you shut him up by answering him? There is no logical answer to that I suppose: but I may ask in my turn: 'What right has he to ask questions anyway?'" W. laughed a bit. "Anyway the question comes back to me almost every time he writes. He is courteous enough about it--that is the reason I do not resent him. I suppose the whole thing will end in an answer some day."
The letter follows. The chief point in it is that the writer hopes he has not been importunate in the question he had asked about Calamus three years before.
"I [Traubel] said to W.: 'That's a humble letter enough: I don't see anything in that to get excited about. He doesn't ask you to answer the old question. In fact he rather apologizes for having asked it.' W. fired up 'Who is excited? As to that question, he does ask it again and again: asks it, asks it, asks it.' I laughed at his vehemence. 'Well, suppose he does? It does not harm. Besides, you've got nothing to hide. I think your silence might lead him to suppose there was a nigger in your wood pile.' 'Oh, nonsense! But for thirty years my enemies and friends have been asking me questions about the _Leaves_: I'm tired of not answering questions.' It was very funny to see his face when he gave a humorous twist to the fling in his last phrase. Then he relaxed and added: 'Anyway I love Symonds. Who could fail to love a man who could write such a letter? I suppose he will yet have to be answered, damn 'im!'"
It is clear that these conversations considerably diminish the force of the declaration in Whitman's letter. We see that the letter which, on the face of it, might have represented the swift and indignant reaction of a man who, suddenly faced by the possibility that his work may be interpreted in a perverse sense, emphatically repudiates that interpretation, was really nothing of the kind. Symonds for at least eighteen years had been gently, considerately, even humbly, yet persistently, asking the same perfectly legitimate question. If the answer was really an emphatic no, it would more naturally have been made in 1872 than 1890. Moreover, in the face of this ever-recurring question, Whitman constantly speaks to his friends of his great affection for Symonds and his admiration for his intellectual cuteness, feelings that would both be singularly out of place if applied to a man who was all the time suggesting the possibility that his writings contained inferences that were "terrible," "morbid," and "damnable." Evidently, during all those years, Whitman could not decide what to reply. On the one hand he was moved by his horror of being questioned, by his caution, by his natural aversion to express approval of anything that could be called unnatural or abnormal. On the other hand, he was moved by the desire to let his work speak for itself, by his declared determination to leave everything open, and possibly by a more or less conscious sympathy with the inferences presented to him. It was not until the last years of his life, when his sexual life belonged to the past, when weakness was gaining on him, when he wished to put aside every drain on his energies, that--being constitutionally incapable of a balanced scientific statement--he chose the simplest and easiest solution of the difficulty.[99]