Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Ii Part 5

[71]

Laborde, Le Palais Mazarin, p. 128.

[72]

Thus she writes in 1701 (Correspondence, edited by Brunet, vol. i, p. 58): "Our heroes take as their models Hercules, Theseus, Alexander, and Caesar, who all had their male favorites. Those who give themselves up to this vice, while believing in Holy Scripture, imagine that it was only a sin when there were few people in the world, and that now the earth is populated it may be regarded as a divertiss.e.m.e.nt. Among the common people, indeed, accusations of this kind are, so far as possible, avoided; but among persons of quality it is publicly spoken of; it is considered a fine saying that since Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord has punished no one for such offences."

[73]

Serieux and Libert, "La Bastille et ses Prisonniers," L'Encephale, September, 1911.

[74]

Witry, "Notes Historiques sur l'h.o.m.os.e.xualite en France," Revue de l'Hypnotisme, January, 1909.

[75]

In early Teutonic days there was little or no trace of any punishment for h.o.m.os.e.xual practices in Germany. This, according to Hermann Michaelis, only appeared after the Church had gained power among the West Goths; in the Breviarium of Alaric II (506), the sodomist was condemned to the stake, and later, in the seventh century, by an edict of King Chindasvinds, to castration. The Frankish capitularies of Charlemange's time adopted ecclesiastical penances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries death by fire was ordained, and the punishments enacted by the German codes tended to become much more ferocious than that edicted by the Justinian code on which they were modelled.

[76]

Raffalovich discusses German friendship, Uranisme et Unis.e.xualite, pp. 157-9. See also Birnbaum, Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. viii, p. 611; he especially ill.u.s.trates this kind of friendship by the correspondence of the poets Gleim and Jacobi, who used to each other the language of lovers, which, indeed, they constantly called themselves.

[77]

This letter may be found in Ernst Schur's Heinrich von Kleist in seinen Briefen, p. 295. Dr. J. Sadger has written a pathographic and psychological study of Kleist, emphasizing the h.o.m.os.e.xual strain, in the Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens series.

[78]

Alexander's not less distinguished brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, though not h.o.m.os.e.xual, possessed, a woman wrote to him, "the soul of a woman and the most tender feeling for womanliness I have ever found in your s.e.x;" he himself admitted the feminine traits in his nature. Spranger (Wilhelm von Humboldt, p. 288) says of him that "he had that dual s.e.xuality without which the moral summits of humanity cannot be reached."

[79]

Krupp caused much scandal by his life at Capri, where he was constantly surrounded by the handsome youths of the place, mandolinists and street arabs, with whom he was on familiar terms, and on whom he lavished money. H. D. Davray, a reliable eyewitness, has written "Souvenirs sur M. Krupp a Capri," L'Europeen, 29 November, 1902. It is not, however, definitely agreed that Krupp was of fully developed h.o.m.os.e.xual temperament (see, e.g., Jahrbuch f. s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. v, p. 1303 et seq.) An account of his life at Capri was published in the Vorwarts, against which Krupp finally brought a libel action; but he died immediately afterward, it is widely believed, by his own hand, and the libel action was withdrawn.

[80]

Madame, the mother of the Regent, in her letters of 12th October, 4th November, and 13th December, 1701, repeatedly makes this a.s.sertion, and implies that it was supported by the English who at that time came over to Paris with the English Amba.s.sador, Lord Portland. The King was very indifferent to women.

[81]

Anselm, Epistola lxii, in Migne's Patrologia, vol. clix, col. 95. John of Salisbury, in his Polycrates, describes the h.o.m.os.e.xual and effeminate habits of his time.

[82]

Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. ii, p. 556.

[83]

Coleridge in his Table Talk (14 May, 1833) remarked: "A man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object-an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appet.i.te. In Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling. Certainly the language of the two friends Musidorus and Pyrocles in the Arcadia is such as we could not use except to women." This pa.s.sage of Coleridge's is interesting as an early English recognition by a distinguished man of genius of what may be termed ideal h.o.m.os.e.xuality.

[84]

See account of Udall in the National Dictionary of Biography.

[85]

Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield, edited with an introduction by A. B. Grosart, 1876. The poems of Barnfield were also edited by Arber, in the English Scholar's Library, 1883. Arber, who always felt much horror for the abnormal, argues that Barnfield's occupation with h.o.m.os.e.xual topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was "for the most part but an amus.e.m.e.nt and had little serious or personal in it." Those readers of Barnfield, however, who are acquainted with h.o.m.os.e.xual literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his poems. This is also the opinion of Moll in his Beruhmte h.o.m.os.e.xuelle.

[86]

See appendix to my edition of Marlowe in the Mermaid Series, first edition. For a study of Marlowe's "Gaveston," regarded as "the hermaphrodite in soul," see J. A. Nicklin, Free Review, December, 1895.

[87]

As Raffalovich acutely points out, the twentieth sonnet, with its reference to the "one thing to my purpose nothing," is alone enough to show that Shakespeare was not a genuine invert, as then he would have found the virility of the loved object beautiful. His sonnets may fairly be compared to the In Memoriam of Tennyson, whom it is impossible to describe as inverted, though in his youth he cherished an ardent friendship for another youth, such as was also felt in youth by Montaigne.

[88]

A scene in Vanbrugh's Relapse, and the chapter (ch. li) in Smollett's Roderick Random describing Lord Strutwell, may also be mentioned as evidencing familiarity with inversion. "In our country," said Lord Strutwell to Rawdon, putting forward arguments familiar to modern champions of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, "it gains ground apace, and in all probability will become in a short time a more fashionable vice than simple fornication."

[89]

These observations on eighteenth century h.o.m.os.e.xuality in London are chiefly based on the volumes of Select Trials at the Old Bailey, published in 1734.

[90]

Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iv, p. 885), who has studied Byron from this point of view, considers that, though his biography has not yet been fully written on the s.e.xual side, he was probably of bis.e.xual temperament; Raffalovich (Uranisme et Unis.e.xualite, p. 309) is of the same opinion.

[91]

A youthful attraction of this kind in a poet is well ill.u.s.trated by Dolben, who died at the age of nineteen. In addition to a pa.s.sion for Greek poetry he cherished a romantic friendship of extraordinary ardor, revealed in his poems, for a slightly older schoolfellow, who was never even aware of the idolatry he aroused. Dolben's life has been written, and his poems edited, by his friend the eminent poet, Robert Bridges (The Poems of D. M. Dolben, edited with a Memoir by R. Bridges, 1911).

[92]

A well-informed narrative of the Oscar Wilde trial is given by Raffalovich in his Uranisme et Unis.e.xualite, pp. 241-281; the full report of the trial has been published by Mason. The best life of Wilde is probably that of Arthur Ransome. Andre Gide's little volume of reminiscences, Oscar Wilde (also translated into English), is well worth reading. Wilde has been discussed in relation to h.o.m.os.e.xuality by Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch fur s.e.xuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901). An instructive doc.u.ment, an unpublished portion of De Profundis, in which Wilde sought to lay the blame for his misfortune on a friend,-his "ancient affection" for whom has, he declares, been turned to "loathing, bitterness, and contempt,"-was published in the Times, 18th April, 1913; it clearly reveals an element of weakness of character.

[93]

T. Wright, Life of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i, p. 158.

[94]

Most of these were carelessly lost or destroyed by Posh. A few have been published by James Blyth, Edward Fitzgerald and 'Posh,' 1908.

[95]

It is as such that Whitman should be approached, and I would desire to protest against the tendency, now marked in many quarters, to treat him merely as an invert, and to vilify him or glorify him accordingly. However important inversion may be as a psychological key to Whitman's personality, it plays but a small part in Whitman's work, and for many who care for that work a negligible part. (I may be allowed to refer to my own essay on Whitman, in The New Spirit, written nearly thirty years ago.)

[96]

I may add that Symonds (in his book on Whitman) accepted this letter as a candid and final statement showing that Whitman was absolutely hostile to s.e.xual inversion, that he had not even taken its phenomena into account, and that he had "omitted to perceive that there are inevitable points of contact between s.e.xual inversion and his doctrine of friendship." He recalls, however, Whitman's own lines at the end of "Calamus" in the Camden edition of 1876:-

"Here my last words, and the most baffling, Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting, Here I shade down and hide my thoughts-I do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems."

[97]

Whitman's letters to Peter Doyle, an uncultured young tram-conductor deeply loved by the poet, have been edited by Dr. Bucke, and published at Boston: Calamus: A Series of Letters, 1897.

[98]

Whitman acknowledged, however (as in the letter to Symonds already referred to), that he had had six children; they appear to have been born in the earlier part of his life when he lived in the South. (See a chapter on Walt Whitman's children in Edward Carpenter's interesting book, Days with Walt Whitman, 1906.) Yet his brother George Whitman said: "I never knew Walt to fall in love with young girls, or even to show them marked attention." And Doyle, who knew him intimately during ten years of late life, said: "Women in that sense never came into his head." The early heteros.e.xual relationship seems to have been an exception in his life. With regard to the number of children I am informed that, in the opinion of a lady who knew Whitman in the South, there can be no reasonable doubt as to the existence of one child, but that when enumerating six he possibly included grandchildren.

[99]

While the h.o.m.os.e.xual strain in Walt Whitman has been more or less definitely admitted by various writers, the most vigorous attempts to present the h.o.m.os.e.xual character of his personality and work are due to Eduard Bertz in Germany, and to Dr. W. C. Rivers in England. Bertz has issued three publications on Whitman: see especially his Der Yankee-Heiland, 1906, and Whitman-Mysterien, 1907. The arguments of Rivers are concisely stated in a pamphlet ent.i.tled Walt Whitman's Anomaly (London: George Allen, 1913). Both Bertz and Rivers emphasize the feminine traits in Whitman. An interesting independent picture of Whitman, at about the date of the letter to Symonds, accompanied by the author's excellent original photographs, is furnished by Dr. John Johnston, A Visit to Walt Whitman, 1898. It may be added that, probably, both the extent and the significance of the feminine traits in Whitman have been overestimated by some writers. Most artists and men of genius have some feminine traits; they do not prove the existence of inversion, nor does their absence disprove it. Dr. Clark Bell writes to me in reference to the little book by Dr. Rivers: "I knew Walt Whitman personally. To me Mr. Whitman was one of the most robust and virile of men, extraordinarily so. He was from my standpoint not feminine at all, but physically masculine and robust. The difficulty is that a virile and strong man who is poetic in temperament, ardent and tender, may have phases and moods of pa.s.sion and emotion which are apt to be misinterpreted." A somewhat similar view, in opposition to Bertz and Rivers, has been vigorously set forth by Bazalgette (who has written a very thorough study of Whitman in French), especially in the Mercure de France for 1st July, 1st Oct., and 15th Nov., 1913.

[100]

Lepelletier, in what may be regarded as the official biography of Verlaine (Paul Verlaine, 1907) seeks to minimize or explain away the h.o.m.os.e.xual aspect of the poet's life. So also Berrichon, Rimbaud's brother-in-law, Mercure de France, 16 July, 1911 and 1 Feb., 1912. P. Es...o...b.., in a judicious essay (included in Preferences, 1913), presents a more reasonable view of this aspect of Verlaine's temperament. Even apart altogether from the evidence as to the poet's tendency to pa.s.sionate friendship, there can be no appeal from the poems themselves, which clearly possess an absolute and unquestionable sincerity.

[101]

Sir Richard Burton, who helped to popularize this view, regarded the phenomenon as "geographical and climatic, not racial," and held that within what he called the Sotadic Zone "the vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, while the races to the north and south of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically, amid the opprobrium of their fellows, who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation, and look upon it with the liveliest disgust." He adds: "The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me, and that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a crasis which elsewhere only occurs sporadically" (Arabian Nights, 1885, vol. x, pp. 205-254). The theory of the Sotadic Zone fails to account for the custom among the Normans, Celts, Scythians, Bulgars, and Tartars, and, moreover, in various of these regions different views have prevailed at different periods. Burton was wholly unacquainted with the psychological investigations into s.e.xual inversion which had, indeed, scarcely begun in his day.

[102]

Spectator (Anthropophyteia, vol. vii, 1910), referring especially to the neighborhood of Sorrento, states that the southern Italians regard pa.s.sive pedicatio as disgraceful, but attach little or no shame to active pedicatio. This indifference enables them to exploit the h.o.m.os.e.xual foreigners who are specially attracted to southern Italy in the development of a flourishing h.o.m.os.e.xual industry.

[103]

It is true that in the solitude of great modern cities it is possible for small h.o.m.os.e.xual coteries to form, in a certain sense, an environment of their own, favorable to their abnormality; yet this fact hardly modifies the general statement made in the text.