SEXUAL INVERSION.
CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCTION.
Homosexuality Among Animals—Among the Lower Human Races—The
Albanians—The Greeks—The Eskimos—The Tribes of the Northwest United
States—Homosexuality Among Soldiers in Europe—Indifference Frequently
Manifested by European Lower Classes—Sexual Inversion at
Rome—Homosexuality in Prisons—Among Men of Exceptional Intellect and
Moral Leaders—Muret—Michelangelo—Winkelmann—Homosexuality in English
History—Walt Whitman—Verlaine—Burton's Climatic Theory of
Homosexuality—The Racial Factor—The Prevalence of Homosexuality Today.
Sexual inversion, as here understood, means sexual instinct turned by
inborn constitutional abnormality toward persons of the same sex. It is
thus a narrower term than homosexuality, which includes all sexual
attractions between persons of the same sex, even when seemingly due to
the accidental absence of the natural objects of sexual attraction, a
phenomenon of wide occurrence among all human races and among most of the
higher animals. It is only during recent years that sexual inversion has
been recognized; previously it was not distinguished from homosexuality in
general, and homosexuality was regarded as a national custom, as an
individual vice, or as an unimportant episode in grave forms of
insanity.[1] We have further to distinguish sexual inversion and all other
forms of homosexuality from another kind of inversion which usually
remains, so far as the sexual impulse itself is concerned, heterosexual,
that is to say, normal. Inversion of this kind leads a person to feel like
a person of the opposite sex, and to adopt, so far as possible, the
tastes, habits, and dress of the opposite sex, while the direction of the
sexual impulse remains normal. This condition I term sexo-esthetic
inversion, or Eonism.
The nomenclature of the highly important form of sexual
perversion with which we are here concerned is extremely varied,
and most investigators have been much puzzled in coming to a
conclusion as to the best, most exact, and at the same time most
colorless names to apply to it.
The first in the field in modern times was Ulrichs who, as early
as 1862, used the appellation "Uranian" (Uranier), based on the
well-known myth in Plato's Banquet. Later he Germanized this
term into "Urning" for the male, and "Urningin" for the female,
and referred to the condition itself as "Urningtum." He also
invented a number of other related terms on the same basis; some
of these terms have had a considerable vogue, but they are too
fanciful and high-strung to secure general acceptance. If used in
other languages than German they certainly should not be used in
their Germanized shape, and it is scarcely legitimate to use the
term "Urning" in English. "Uranian" is more correct.
In Germany the first term accepted by recognized scientific
authorities was "contrary sexual feeling" (Konträre
Sexualempfindung). It was devised by Westphal in 1869, and used
by Krafft-Ebing and Moll. Though thus accepted by the earliest
authorities in this field, and to be regarded as a fairly
harmless and vaguely descriptive term, it is somewhat awkward,
and is now little used in Germany; it was never currently used
outside Germany. It has been largely superseded by the term
"homosexuality." This also was devised (by a little-known
Hungarian doctor, Benkert, who used the pseudonym Kertbeny) in
the same year (1869), but at first attracted no attention. It
has, philologically, the awkward disadvantage of being a bastard
term compounded of Greek and Latin elements, but its
significance—sexual attraction to the same sex—is fairly clear
and definite, while it is free from any question-begging
association of either favorable or unfavorable character. (Edward
Carpenter has proposed to remedy its bastardly linguistic
character by transforming it into "homogenic;" this, however,
might mean not only "toward the same sex," but "of the same
kind," and in German already possesses actually that meaning.)
The term "homosexual" has the further advantage that on account
of its classical origin it is easily translatable into many
languages. It is now the most widespread general term for the
phenomena we are dealing with, and it has been used by
Hirschfeld, now the chief authority in this field, as the title
of his encyclopedic work, Die Homosexualität.
"Sexual Inversion" (in French "inversion sexuelle," and in
Italian "inversione sessuale") is the term which has from the
first been chiefly used in France and Italy, ever since Charcot
and Magnan, in 1882, published their cases of this anomaly in the
Archives de Neurologie. It had already been employed in Italy
by Tamassia in the Revista Sperimentale di Freniatria, in 1878.
I have not discovered when and where the term "sexual inversion"
was first used. Possibly it first appeared in English, for long
before the paper of Charcot and Magnan I have noticed, in an
anonymous review of Westphal's first paper in the Journal of
Mental Science (then edited by Dr. Maudsley) for October, 1871,
that "Conträre Sexualempfindung" is translated as "inverted
sexual proclivity." So far as I am aware, "sexual inversion" was
first used in English, as the best term, by J. A. Symonds in 1883,
in his privately printed essay, A Problem in Greek Ethics.
Later, in 1897, the same term was adopted, I believe for the
first time publicly in English, in the present work.
It is unnecessary to refer to the numerous other names which have
been proposed. (A discussion of the nomenclature will be found in
the first chapter of Hirschfeld's work, Die Homosexualität, and
of some special terms in an article by Schouten,
Sexual-Probleme, December, 1912.) It may suffice to mention the
ancient theological and legal term "sodomy" (sodomia) because it
is still the most popular term for this perversion, though, it
must be remembered, it has become attached to the physical act of
intercourse per anum, even when carried out heterosexually, and
has little reference to psychic sexual proclivity. This term has
its origin in the story (narrated in Genesis, ch. xix) of Lot's
visitors whom the men of Sodom desired to have intercourse with,
and of the subsequent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This
story furnishes a sufficiently good ground for the use of the
term, though the Jews do not regard sodomy as the sin of Sodom,
but rather inhospitality and hardness of heart to the poor (J.
Preuss, Biblisch-Talmudische Medizin, pp. 579-81), and
Christian theologians also, both Catholic and Protestant (see,
e.g., Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iv, p. 199,
and Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, p. 742), have argued that it
was not homosexuality, but their other offenses, which provoked
the destruction of the Cities of the Plain. In Germany "sodomy"
has long been used to denote bestiality, or sexual intercourse
with animals, but this use of the term is quite unjustified. In
English there is another term, "buggery," identical in meaning
with sodomy, and equally familiar. "Bugger" (in French,
bougre) is a corruption of "Bulgar," the ancient Bulgarian
heretics having been popularly supposed to practise this
perversion. The people of every country have always been eager to
associate sexual perversions with some other country than their
own.
The terms usually adopted in the present volume are "sexual
inversion" and "homosexuality." The first is used more especially
to indicate that the sexual impulse is organically and innately
turned toward individuals of the same sex. The second is used
more comprehensively of the general phenomena of sexual
attraction between persons of the same sex, even if only of a
slight and temporary character. It may be admitted that there is
no precise warrant for any distinction of this kind between the
two terms. The distinction in the phenomena is, however, still
generally recognized; thus Iwan Bloch applies the term
"homosexuality" to the congenital form, and
"pseudo-homosexuality" to its spurious or simulated forms. Those
persons who are attracted to both sexes are now usually termed
"bisexual," a more convenient term than "psycho-sexual
hermaphrodite," which was formerly used. There remains the normal
person, who is "heterosexual."
Before approaching the study of sexual inversion in cases which we may
investigate with some degree of scientific accuracy, there is interest in
glancing briefly at the phenomena as they appear before us, as yet
scarcely or at all differentiated, among animals, among various human
races, and at various periods.
Among animals in a domesticated or confined state it is easy to find
evidence of homosexual attraction, due merely to the absence of the other
sex.[2] This was known to the ancients; the Egyptians regarded two male
partridges as the symbol of homosexuality, and Aristotle noted that two
female pigeons would cover each other if no male was at hand. Buffon
observed many examples, especially among birds. He found that, if male or
female birds of various species—such as partridges, fowls, and
doves—were shut up together, they would soon begin to have sexual
relations among themselves, the males sooner and more frequently than the
females. More recently Sainte-Claire Deville observed that dogs, rams, and
bulls, when isolated, first became restless and dangerous, and then
acquired a permanent state of sexual excitement, not obeying the laws of
heat, and leading them to attempts to couple together; the presence of the
opposite sex at once restored them to normal conditions.[3] Bombarda of
Lisbon states that in Portugal it is well known that in every herd of
bulls there is nearly always one bull who is ready to lend himself to the
perverted whims of his companions.[4] It may easily be observed how a cow
in heat exerts an exciting influence on other cows, impelling them to
attempt to play the bull's part. Lacassagne has also noted among young
fowls and puppies, etc., that, before ever having had relations with the
opposite sex, and while in complete liberty, they make hesitating attempts
at intercourse with their own sex.[5] This, indeed, together with similar
perversions, may often be observed, especially in puppies, who afterward
become perfectly normal. Among white rats, which are very sexual animals,
Steinach found that, when deprived of females, the males practise
homosexuality, though only with males with whom they have long associated;
the weaker rats play the passive part. But when a female is introduced
they immediately turn to her; although they are occasionally altogether
indifferent to sex, they never actually prefer their own sex.[6]
With regard to the playing of the female part by the weaker rats it is
interesting to observe that Féré found among insects that the passive part
in homosexual relations is favored by fatigue; among cockchafers it was
the male just separated from the female who would take the passive part
(on the rare occasions when homosexual relations occurred) with a fresh
male.[7]
Homosexuality appears to be specially common among birds. It was among
birds that it attracted the attention of the ancients, and numerous
interesting observations have been made in more recent times. Thus Selous,
a careful bird-watcher, finds that the ruff, the male of the Machetes
pugnax, suffers from sexual repression owing to the coyness of the female
(the reeve), and consequently the males often resort to homosexual
intercourse. It is still more remarkable that the reeves also, even in the
presence of the males, will court each other and have intercourse.[8] We
may associate this with the high erotic development of birds, the
difficulty with which tumescence seems to occur in them, and their long
courtships.
Among the higher animals, again, female monkeys, even when grown up (as
Moll was informed), behave in a sexual way to each other, though it is
difficult to say how far this is merely in play. Dr. Seitz, Director of
the Frankfurt Zoölogical Garden, gave Moll a record of his own careful
observations of homosexual phenomena among the males and females of
various animals confined in the Garden (Antelope cervicapra, Bos Indicus,
Capra hircus, Ovis steatopyga).[9] In all such cases we are not concerned
with sexual inversion, but merely with the accidental turning of the
sexual instinct into an abnormal channel, the instinct being called out
by an approximate substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in
the absence of the normal object.
It is probable, however, that cases of true sexual inversion—in which
gratification is preferably sought in the same sex—may be found among
animals, although observations have rarely been made or recorded. It has
been found by Muccioli, an Italian authority on pigeons, that among
Belgian carrier-pigeons inverted practices may occur, even in the presence
of many of the other sex.[10] This seems to be true inversion, though we
are not told whether these birds were also attracted toward the opposite
sex. The birds of this family appear to be specially liable to sexual
perversion. Thus M. J. Bailly-Maitre, a breeder of great knowledge and a
keen observer, wrote to Girard that "they are strange creatures in their
manners and customs and are apt to elude the most persistent observer. No
animal is more depraved. Mating between males, and still more frequently
between females, often occurs at an early age: up to the second year. I
have had several pairs of pigeons formed by subjects of the same sex who
for many months behaved as if the mating were natural. In some cases this
had taken place among young birds of the same nest, who acted like real
mates, though both subjects were males. In order to mate them productively
we have had to separate them and shut each of them up for some days with a
female."[11] In the Berlin Zoölogical Gardens also, it has been noticed
that two birds of the same sex will occasionally become attached to each
other and remain so in spite of repeated advances from individuals of
opposite sex. This occurred, for instance, in the case of two males of the
Egyptian goose who were thus to all appearance paired, and always kept
together, vigorously driving away any female that approached. Similarly a
male Australian sheldrake was paired to a male of another species.[12]
Among birds generally, inverted sexuality seems to accompany the
development of the secondary sexual characters of the opposite sex which
is sometimes found. Thus, a poultry-breeder describes a hen (colored
Dorking) crowing like a cock, only somewhat more harshly, as a cockerel
crows, and with an enormous comb, larger than is ever seen in the male.
This bird used to try to tread her fellow-hens. At the same time she laid
early and regularly, and produced "grand chickens."[13] Among ducks, also,
it has occasionally been observed that the female assumes at the same time
both male livery and male sexual tendencies. It is probable that such
observations will be multiplied in the future, and that sexual inversion
in the true sense will be found commoner among animals than at present it
appears to be.
Traces of homosexual practices, sometimes on a large scale, have been
found among all the great divisions of the human race. It would be
possible to collect a considerable body of evidence under this head.[14]
Unfortunately, however, the travellers and others on whose records we are
dependent have been so shy of touching these subjects, and so ignorant of
the main points for investigation, that it is very difficult to discover
sexual inversion in the proper sense in any lower race. Travellers have
spoken vaguely of crimes against nature without defining the precise
relationship involved nor inquiring how far any congenital impulse could
be distinguished.
Looking at the phenomena generally, so far as they have been recorded
among various lower races, we seem bound to recognize that there is a
widespread natural instinct impelling men toward homosexual relationships,
and that this has been sometimes, though very exceptionally, seized upon
and developed for advantageous social purposes. On the whole, however,
unnatural intercourse (sodomy) has been regarded as an antisocial offense,
and punishable sometimes by the most serious penalties that could be
invented. This was, for instance, the case in ancient Mexico, in Peru,
among the Persians, in China, and among the Hebrews and Mohammedans.
Even in very early history it is possible to find traces of homosexuality,
with or without an implied disapproval. Its existence in Assyria and
Babylonia is indicated by the Codex Hamurabi and by inscriptions which do
not on the whole refer to it favorably.[15] As regards Egypt we learn from
a Fayum papyrus, found by Flinders Petrie, translated by Griffiths, and
discussed by Oefele,[16] that more than four thousand years ago homosexual
practices were so ancient that they were attributed to the gods Horus and
Set. The Egyptians showed great admiration of masculine beauty, and it
would seem that they never regarded homosexuality as punishable or even
reprehensible. It is notable, also, that Egyptian women were sometimes of
very virile type, and Hirschfeld considers that intermediate sexual types
were specially widespread among the Egyptians.[17]
One might be tempted to expect that homosexual practices would be
encouraged whenever it was necessary to keep down the population.
Aristotle says that it was allowed by law in Crete for this end. And
Professor Haddon tells me that at Torres Straits a native advocated sodomy
on this ground.[18] There seems, however, on the whole, to be little
evidence pointing to this utilization of the practice. The homosexual
tendency appears to have flourished chiefly among warriors and warlike
peoples. During war and the separation from women that war involves, the
homosexual instinct tends to develop; it flourished, for instance, among
the Carthaginians and among the Normans, as well as among the warlike
Dorians, Scythians, Tartars, and Celts,[19] and, when there has been an
absence of any strong moral feeling against it, the instinct has been
cultivated and, idealized as a military virtue, partly because it
counteracts the longing for the softening feminine influences of the home
and partly because it seems to have an inspiring influence in promoting
heroism and heightening esprit de corps. In the lament of David over
Jonathan we have a picture of intimate friendship—"passing the love of
women"—between comrades in arms among a barbarous, warlike race. There is
nothing to show that such a relationship was sexual, but among warriors in
New Caledonia friendships that were undoubtedly homosexual were recognized
and regulated; the fraternity of arms, according to Foley,[20] complicated
with pederasty, was more sacred than uterine fraternity. We have,
moreover, a recent example of the same relationships recognized in a
modern European race—the Albanians.
Hahn, in the course of his Albanische Studien (1854, p. 166),
says that the young men between 16 and 24 lore boys from about 12
to 17. A Gege marries at the age of 24 or 25, and then he
usually, but not always, gives up boy-love. The following passage
is reported by Hahn as the actual language used to him by an
Albanian Gege: "The lover's feeling for the boy is pure as
sunshine. It places the beloved on the same pedestal as a saint.
It is the highest and most exalted passion of which the human
breast is capable. The sight of a beautiful youth awakens
astonishment in the lover, and opens the door of his heart to the
delight which the contemplation of this loveliness affords. Love
takes possession of him so completely that all his thought and
feeling goes out in it. If he finds himself in the presence of
the beloved, he rests absorbed in gazing on him. Absent, he
thinks of nought but him. If the beloved unexpectedly appears, he
falls into confusion, changes color, turns alternately pale and
red. His heart beats faster and impedes his breathing. He has
ears and eyes only for the beloved. He shuns touching him with
the hand, kisses him only on the forehead, sings his praise in
verse, a woman's never." One of these love-poems of an Albanian
Gege runs as follows: "The sun, when it rises in the morning, is
like you, boy, when you are near me. When your dark eye turns
upon me, it drives my reason from my head."
It should be added that Prof. Weigand, who knew the Albanians
well, assured Bethe (Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1907,
p. 475) that the relations described by Hahn are really sexual,
although tempered by idealism. A German scholar who travelled in
Albania some years ago, also, assured Näcke (Jahrbuch für
sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix, 1908, p. 327) that he could
fully confirm Hahn's statements, and that, though it was
difficult to speak positively, he doubted whether these
relationships were purely ideal. While most prevalent among the
Moslems, they are also found among the Christians, and receive
the blessing of the priest in church. Jealousy is frequently
aroused, the same writer remarks, and even murder may be
committed on account of a boy.
It may be mentioned here that among the Tschuktsches,
Kamschatdals, and allied peoples (according to a Russian
anthropological journal quoted in Sexual-Probleme, January,
1913, p. 41) there are homosexual marriages among the men, and
occasionally among the women, ritually consecrated and openly
recognized.
The Albanians, it is possible, belonged to the same stock which produced
the Dorian Greeks, and the most important and the most thoroughly known
case of socially recognized homosexuality is that of Greece during its
period of highest military as well as ethical and intellectual vigor. In
this case, as in those already mentioned, the homosexual tendency was
frequently regarded as having beneficial results, which caused it to be
condoned, if not, indeed, fostered as a virtue. Plutarch repeated the old
Greek statement that the Beotians, the Lacedemonians, and the Cretans were
the most warlike stocks because they were the strongest in love; an army
composed of loving homosexual couples, it was held, would be invincible.
It appears that the Dorians introduced paiderastia, as the Greek form of
homosexuality is termed, into Greece; they were the latest invaders, a
vigorous mountain race from the northwest (the region including what is
now Albania) who spread over the whole land, the islands, and Asia Minor,
becoming the ruling race. Homosexuality was, of course, known before they
came, but they made it honorable. Homer never mentions it, and it was not
known as legitimate to the Æolians or the Ionians. Bethe, who has written
a valuable study of Dorian paiderastia, states that the Dorians admitted
a kind of homosexual marriage, and even had a kind of boy-marriage by
capture, the scattered vestiges of this practice indicating, Bethe
believes, that it was a general custom among the Dorians before the
invasion of Greece. Such unions even received a kind of religions
consecration. It was, moreover, shameful for a noble youth in Crete to
have no lover; it spoke ill for his character. By paiderastia a man
propagated his virtues, as it were, in the youth he loved, implanting them
by the act of intercourse.
In its later Greek phases paiderastia was associated less with war than
with athletics; it was refined and intellectualized by poetry and
philosophy. It cannot be doubted that both Æschylus and Sophocles
cultivated boy-love, while its idealized presentation in the dialogues of
Plato has caused it to be almost identified with his name; thus in the
early Charmides we have an attractive account of the youth who gives his
name to the dialogue and the emotions he excites are described. But even
in the early dialogues Plato only conditionally approved of the sexual
side of paiderastia and he condemned it altogether in the final
Laws.[21]
The early stages of Greek paiderastia are very interestingly
studied by Bethe, "Die Dorische Knabenliebe," Rheinisches Museum
für Philologie, 1907. J. A. Symonds's essay on the later aspects
of paiderastia, especially as reflected in Greek literature, A
Problem in Greek Ethics, is contained in the early German
edition of the present study, but (though privately printed in
1883 by the author in an edition of twelve copies and since
pirated in another private edition) it has not yet been published
in English. Paiderastia in Greek poetry has also been studied
by Paul Brandt, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vols.
viii and ix (1906 and 1907), and by Otto Knapp
(Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, pp. 254-260) who seeks to
demonstrate the sensual side of paiderastia. On the other hand,
Licht, working on somewhat the same lines as Bethe (Zeitschrift
für Sexualwissenschaft, August, 1908), deals with the ethical
element in paiderastia, points out its beneficial moral
influence, and argues that it was largely on this ground that it
was counted sacred. Licht has also published a learned study of
paiderastia in Attic comedy (Anthropophyteia, vol. vii,
1910), and remarks that "without paiderastia Greek comedy is
unthinkable." Paiderastia in the Greek anthology has been fully
explored by P. Stephanus (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen,
vol. ix, 1908, p. 213). Kiefer, who has studied Socrates in
relation to homosexuality (O. Kiefer, "Socrates und die
Homosexualität," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ix,
1908), concludes that he was bisexual but that his sexual
impulses had been sublimated. It may be added that many results
of recent investigation concerning paiderastia are summarized
by Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, pp. 747-788, and by Edward
Carpenter, Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk, 1914, part
ii; see also Bloch, Die Prostitution, vol. i, p. 232 et seq.,
and Der Ursprung der Syphilis, vol. ii, p. 564.
It would appear that almost the only indications outside Greece of
paiderastic homosexuality showing a high degree of tenderness and
esthetic feeling are to be found in Persian and Arabian literature, after
the time of the Abbasids, although this practice was forbidden by the
Koran.[22]
In Constantinople, as Näcke was informed by German inverts living in that
city, homosexuality is widespread, most cultivated Turks being capable of
relations with boys as well as with women, though very few are exclusively
homosexual, so that their attitude would seem to be largely due to custom
and tradition. Adult males rarely have homosexual relations together; one
of the couple is usually a boy of 12 to 18 years, and this condition of
things among the refined classes is said to resemble ancient Greek
paiderastia. But ordinary homosexual prostitution is prevalent; it is
especially recognized in the baths which abound in Constantinople and are
often open all night. The attendants at these baths are youths who
scarcely need an invitation to induce them to gratify the client in this
respect, the gratification usually consisting in masturbation, mutual or
one-sided, as desired. The practice, though little spoken of, is carried
on almost openly, and blackmailing is said to be unknown.[23] In the New
Turkey, however, it is stated by Adler Bey that homosexual prostitution
has almost disappeared.[24]
There is abundant evidence to show that homosexual practices exist and
have long existed in most parts of the world outside Europe, when
subserving no obvious social or moral end. How far they are associated
with congenital inversion is usually very doubtful. In China, for
instance, it seems that there are special houses devoted to male
prostitution, though less numerous than the houses devoted to females, for
homosexuality cannot be considered common in China (its prevalence among
Chinese abroad being due to the absence of women) and it is chiefly found
in the north.[25] When a rich man gives a feast he sends for women to
cheer the repast by music and song, and for boys to serve at table and to
entertain the guests by their lively conversation. The boys have been
carefully brought up for this occupation, receiving an excellent
education, and their mental qualities are even more highly valued than
their physical attractiveness. The women are less carefully brought up and
less esteemed. After the meal the lads usually return home with a
considerable fee. What further occurs the Chinese say little about. It
seems that real and deep affection is often born of these relations, at
first platonic, but in the end becoming physical, not a matter for great
concern in the eyes of the Chinese. In the Chinese novels, often of a very
literary character, devoted to masculine love, it seems that all the
preliminaries and transports of normal love are to be found, while
physical union may terminate the scene. In China, however, the law may be
brought into action for attempts against nature even with mutual consent;
the penalty is one hundred strokes with the bamboo and a month's
imprisonment; if there is violence, the penalty is decapitation; I am not
able to say how far the law is a dead letter. According to Matignon, so
far as homosexuality exists in China, it is carried on with much more
decorum and restraint than it is in Europe, and he thinks it may be put
down to the credit of the Chinese that, unlike Europeans, they never
practice unnatural connection with women. His account of the customs of
the Chinese confirms Morache's earlier account, and he remarks that,
though not much spoken of, homosexuality is not looked down upon. He gives
some interesting details concerning the boy prostitutes. These are sold by
their parents (sometimes stolen from them), about the age of 4, and
educated, while they are also subjected to a special physical training,
which includes massage of the gluteal regions to favor development,
dilatation of the anus, and epilation (which is not, however, practised by
Chinese women). At the same time, they are taught music, singing, drawing,
and the art of poetry. The waiters at the restaurants always know where
these young gentlemen are to be found when they are required to grace a
rich man's feast. They are generally accompanied by a guardian, and
usually nothing very serious takes place, for they know their value, and
money will not always buy their expensive favors. They are very
effeminate, luxuriously dressed and perfumed, and they seldom go on foot.
There are, however, lower orders of such prostitutes.[26]
Homosexuality is easily traceable in India. Dubois referred to houses
devoted to male prostitution, with men dressed as women, and imitating the
ways of women.[27] Burton in the "Terminal Essay" to his translation of
the Arabian Nights, states that when in 1845 Sir Charles Napier
conquered and annexed Sind three brothels of eunuchs and boys were found
in the small town of Karachi, and Burton was instructed to visit and
report on them. Hindus, in general, however, it appears, hold
homosexuality in abhorrence. In Afghanistan homosexuality is more
generally accepted, and Burton stated that "each caravan is accompanied by
a number of boys and lads almost in woman's attire, with kohled eyes and
rouged cheeks, long tresses and hennaed fingers and toes, riding
luxuriously in camel paniers."
If we turn to the New World, we find that among the American Indians, from
the Eskimo of Alaska downward to Brazil and still farther south,
homosexual customs have been very frequently observed. Sometimes they are
regarded by the tribe with honor, sometimes with indifference, sometimes
with contempt; but they appear to be always tolerated. Although there are
local differences, these customs, on the whole, seem to have much in
common. The best early description which I have been able to find is by
Langsdorff[28] and concerns the Aleuts of Oonalashka in Alaska: "Boys, if
they happen to be very handsome," he says, "are often brought up entirely
in the manner of girls, and instructed in the arts women use to please
men; their beards are carefully plucked out as soon as they begin to
appear, and their chins tattooed like those of women; they wear ornaments
of glass beads upon their legs and arms, bind and cut their hair in the
same manner as the women, and supply their place with the men as
concubines. This shocking, unnatural, and immoral practice has obtained
here even from the remotest times; nor have any measures hitherto been
taken to repress and restrain it; such men are known under the name of
schopans."
Among the Konyagas Langsdorff found the custom much more common than among
the Aleuts; he remarks that, although the mothers brought up some of their
children in this way, they seemed very fond of their offspring. Lisiansky,
at about the same period, tells us that: "Of all the customs of these
islanders, the most disgusting is that of men, called schoopans, living
with men, and supplying the place of women. These are brought up from
their infancy with females, and taught all the feminine arts. They even
assume the manner and dress of the women so nearly that a stranger would
naturally take them for what they are not. This odious practice was
formerly so prevalent that the residence of one of these monsters in a
house was considered as fortunate; it is, however, daily losing
ground."[29] He mentions a case in which a priest had nearly married two
males, when an interpreter chanced to come in and was able to inform him
what he was doing.
The practice has, however, apparently continued to be fairly common among
the Alaska Eskimos down to recent times. Thus Dr. Engelmann mentioned to
me that he was informed by those who had lived in Alaska, especially near
Point Barrow, that as many as 5 such individuals (regarded by uninstructed
strangers as "hermaphrodites") might be found in a single comparatively
small community. It is stated by Davydoff, as quoted by Holmberg,[30] that
the boy is selected to be a schopan because he is girl-like. This is a
point of some interest as it indicates that the schopan is not effeminated
solely by suggestion and association, but is probably feminine by inborn
constitution.
In Louisiana, Florida, Yucatan, etc., somewhat similar customs exist or
have existed. In Brazil men are to be found dressed as women and solely
occupying themselves with feminine occupations; they are not very highly
regarded.[31] They are called cudinas: i.e., circumcized. Among the
Pueblo Indians of New Mexico these individuals are called mujerados
(supposed to be a corruption of mujeriego) and are the chief passive
agents in the homosexual ceremonies of these people. They are said to be
intentionally effeminated in early life by much masturbation and by
constant horse-riding.[32]
Among all the tribes of the northwest United States sexual inverts may be
found. The invert is called a boté ("not man, not woman") by the
Montana, and a burdash ("half-man, half-woman") by the Washington
Indians. The boté has been carefully studied by Dr. A. B. Holder.[33]
Holder finds that the boté wears woman's dress, and that his speech and
manners are feminine. The dress and manners are assumed in childhood, but
no sexual practices take place until puberty. These consist in the
practice of fellatio by the boté, who probably himself experiences the
orgasm at the same time. The boté is not a pederast, although pederasty
occurs among these Indians. Holder examined boté who was splendidly
made, prepossessing, and in perfect health. With much reluctance he agreed
to a careful examination. The sexual organs were quite normal, though
perhaps not quite so large as his physique would suggest, but he had
never had intercourse with a woman. On removing his clothes he pressed his
thighs together, as a timid woman would, so as to conceal completely the
sexual organs; Holder says that the thighs "really, or to my fancy," had
the feminine rotundity. He has heard a boté "beg a male Indian to
submit to his caress," and he tells that "one little fellow, while in the
agency boarding-school, was found frequently surreptitiously wearing
female attire. He was punished, but finally escaped from school and became
a boté, which vocation he has since followed."
At Tahiti at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Turnbull[34] found
that "there are a set of men in this country whose open profession is of
such abomination that the laudable delicacy of our language will not admit
it to be mentioned. These are called by the natives Mahoos; they assume
the dress, attitude, and manners of women, and affect all the fantastic
oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females. They mostly associate
with the women, who court their acquaintance. With the manners of the
women they adopt their peculiar employments, making cloth, bonnets, and
mats; and so completely are they unsexed that had they not been pointed
out to me I should not have known them but as women. I add, with some
satisfaction, that the encouragement of this abomination is almost solely
confined to the chiefs."
Among the Sakalaves of Madagascar there are certain boys called sekatra,
as described by Lasnet, who are apparently chosen from childhood on
account of weak or delicate appearance and brought up as girls. They live
like women and have intercourse with men, with or without sodomy, paying
the men who please them.[35]
Among the negro population of Zanzibar forms of homosexuality which are
believed to be congenital (as well as acquired forms) are said to be
fairly common. Their frequency is thought to be due to Arab influence. The
male congenital inverts show from their earliest years no aptitude for
men's occupations, but are attracted toward female occupations. As they
grow older they wear women's clothes, dress their hair in women's fashion,
and behave altogether like women. They associate only with women and with
male prostitutes, and they obtain sexual satisfaction by passive pederasty
or in ways simulating coitus. In appearance they resemble ordinary male
prostitutes, who are common in Zanzibar, but it is noteworthy that the
natives make a clear distinction between them and men prostitutes. The
latter are looked down on with contempt, while the former, as being what
they are "by the will of God," are tolerated.[36]
Homosexuality; occurs in various parts of Africa. Cases of effeminatio
and passive sodomy have been reported from Unyamwezi and Uganda. Among the
Bangala of the Upper Congo sodomy between men is very common, especially
when they are away from home, in strange towns, or in fishing camps. If,
however, a man had intercourse with a woman per anum he was at one time
liable to be put to death.[37]
Among the Papuans in some parts of New Guinea, as already mentioned,
homosexuality is said to be well recognized, and is resorted to for
convenience as well, perhaps, as for Malthusian reasons.[38] But in the
Rigo district of British New Guinea, where habitual sodomy is not
practised, Dr. Seligmann, of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to
Torres Straits, made some highly important observations on several men and
women who clearly appeared to be cases of congenital sexual inversion with
some degree of esthetic inversion and even some anatomical
modification.[39] These people, it may be noted, belong to a primitive
race, uncontaminated by contact with white races, and practically still in
the Stone Age.
Finally, among another allied primitive people, the Australians, it would
appear that homosexuality has long been well established in tribal
customs. Among the natives of Kimberley, Western Australia (who are by no
means of low type, quick and intelligent, with special aptitudes for
learning languages and music), if a wife is not obtainable for a young man
he is presented with a boy-wife between the ages of 5 and 10 (the age when
a boy receives his masculine initiation). The exact nature of the
relations between the boy-wife and his protector are doubtful; they
certainly have connection, but the natives repudiate with horror and
disgust the idea of sodomy.[40]
Further light is thrown on homosexuality in Australia by the supposition
of Spencer and Gillen that the mika operation (urethral subincision), an
artificial hypospadias, is for the purpose of homosexual intercourse.
Klaatsch has discussed the homosexual origin of the mika operation on
the basis of information he received from missionaries at Niol-Niol, on
the northwest coast. The subincised man acts as a female to the as yet
unoperated boys, who perform coitus in the incised opening. Both informed
Klaatsch in 1906 that at Boulia in Queensland the operated men are said to
"possess a vulva."[41]
These various accounts are of considerable interest, though for the most
part their precise significance remains doubtful. Some of them,
however,—such as Holder's description of the boté, Baumann's account of
homosexual phenomena in Zanzibar, and especially Seligmann's observations
in British New Guinea,—indicate not only the presence of esthetic
inversion but of true congenital sexual inversion. The extent of the
evidence will doubtless be greatly enlarged as the number of competent
observers increases, and crucial points are no longer so frequently
overlooked.
On the whole, the evidence shows that among lower races homosexual
practices are regarded with considerable indifference, and the real
invert, if he exists among them, as doubtless he does exist, generally
passes unperceived or joins some sacred caste which sanctifies his
exclusively homosexual inclinations.
Even in Europe today a considerable lack of repugnance to homosexual
practices may be found among the lower classes. In this matter, as
folklore shows in so many other matters, the uncultured man of
civilization is linked to the savage. In England, I am told, the soldier
often has little or no objection to prostitute himself to the "swell" who
pays him, although for pleasure he prefers to go to women; and Hyde Park
is spoken of as a center of male prostitution.
"Among the working masses of England and Scotland," Q. writes,
"'comradeship' is well marked, though not (as in Italy) very
conscious of itself. Friends often kiss each other, though this
habit seems to vary a good deal in different sections and
coteries. Men commonly sleep together, whether comrades or not,
and so easily get familiar. Occasionally, but not so very often,
this relation delays for a time, or even indefinitely, actual
marriage, and in some instances is highly passionate and
romantic. There is a good deal of grossness, no doubt, here and
there in this direction among the masses; but there are no male
prostitutes (that I am aware of) whose regular clients are manual
workers. This kind of prostitution in London is common enough,
but I have only a slight personal knowledge of it. Many youths
are 'kept' handsomely in apartments by wealthy men, and they are,
of course, not always inaccessible to others. Many keep
themselves in lodgings by this means, and others eke out scanty
wages by the same device: just like women, in fact. Choirboys
reinforce the ranks to a considerable extent, and private
soldiers to a large extent. Some of the barracks (notably
Knightsbridge) are great centres. On summer evenings Hyde Park
and the neighborhood of Albert Gate is full of guardsmen and
others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in
uniform or out. In these cases it sometimes only amounts to a
chat on a retired seat or a drink at a bar; sometimes recourse is
had to a room in some known lodging-house, or to one or two
hotels which lend themselves to this kind of business. In any
case it means a covetable addition to Tommy Atkins's
pocket-money." And Mr. Raffalovich, speaking of London, remarks:
"The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than
we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in
certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of
the majority of the men." It is worth noting that there is a
perfect understanding in this matter between soldiers and the
police, who may always be relied upon by the former for
assistance and advice. I am indebted to my correspondent "Z" for
the following notes: "Soldiers are no less sought after in France
than in England or in Germany, and special houses exist for
military prostitution both in Paris and the garrison-towns. Many
facts known about the French army go to prove that these habits
have been contracted in Algeria, and have spread to a formidable
extent through whole regiments. The facts related by Ulrichs
about the French foreign legion, on the testimony of a credible
witness who had been a pathic in his regiment, deserve attention
(Ara Spei, p. 20; Memnon, p. 27). This man, who was a German,
told Ulrichs that the Spanish, French, and Italian soldiers were
the lovers, the Swiss and German their beloved (see also General
Brossier's Report, quoted by Burton, Arabian Nights, vol. x, p.
251). In Lucien Descaves's military novel, Sous Offs (Paris,
Tresse et Stock, 1890), some details are given regarding
establishments for male prostitution. See pages 322, 412, and 417
for description of the drinking-shop called 'Aux Amis de
l'Armée,' where a few maids were kept for show, and also of its
frequenters, including, in particular, the Adjutant Laprévotte.
Ulrichs reports that in the Austrian army lectures on homosexual
vices are regularly given to cadets and conscripts (Memnon, p.
26). A soldier who had left the army told a friend of mine that
he and many of his comrades had taken to homosexual indulgences
when abroad on foreign service in a lonely station. He kept the
practice up in England 'because the women of his class were so
unattractive.' The captain of an English man-of-war said that he
was always glad to send his men on shore after a long cruise at
sea, never feeling sure how far they might not all go if left
without women for a certain space of time." I may add that A.
Hamon (La France Sociale et Politique, 1891, pp. 653-55; also
in his Psychologie du Militaire Professional, chapter x) gives
details as to the prevalence of homosexuality in the French army,
especially in Algeria; he regards it as extremely common,
although the majority are free. A fragment of a letter by General
Lamoricière (speaking of Marshal Changarnier) is quoted: En
Afrique nous en étions tous, mais lui en est resté ici.
This primitive indifference is doubtless also a factor in the prevalence
of homosexuality among criminals, although, here, it must be remembered,
two other factors (congenital abnormality and the isolation of
imprisonment) have to be considered. In Russia, Tarnowsky observes that
all pederasts are agreed that the common people are tolerably indifferent
to their sexual advances, which they call "gentlemen's games." A
correspondent remarks on "the fact, patent to all observers, that simple
folk not infrequently display no greater disgust for the abnormalities of
sexual appetite than they do for its normal manifestations."[42] He knows
of many cases in which men of lower class were flattered and pleased by
the attentions of men of higher class, although not themselves inverted.
And from this point of view the following case, which he mentions, is very
instructive:—
A pervert whom I can trust told me that he had made advances to
upward of one hundred men in the course of the last fourteen
years, and that he had only once met with a refusal (in which
case the man later on offered himself spontaneously) and only
once with an attempt to extort money. Permanent relations of
friendship sprang up in most instances. He admitted that he
looked after these persons and helped them with his social
influence and a certain amount of pecuniary support—setting one
up in business, giving another something to marry on, and finding
places for others.
Among the peasantry in Switzerland, I am informed, homosexual
relationships are not uncommon before marriage, and such relationships are
lightly spoken of as "Dummheiten". No doubt, similar traits might be found
in the peasantry of other parts of Europe.
What may be regarded as true sexual inversion can be traced in Europe from
the beginning of the Christian era (though we can scarcely demonstrate the
congenital element) especially among two classes—men of exceptional
ability and criminals; and also, it may be added, among those neurotic and
degenerate individuals who may be said to lie between these two classes,
and on or over the borders of both. Homosexuality, mingled with various
other sexual abnormalities and excesses, seems to have flourished in Rome
during the empire, and is well exemplified in the persons of many of the
emperors.[43] Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero,
Galba, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Commodus, and
Heliogabalus—many of them men of great ability and, from a Roman
standpoint, great moral worth—are all charged, on more or less solid
evidence, with homosexual practices. In Julius Cæsar—"the husband of all
women and the wife of all men" as he was satirically termed—excess of
sexual activity seems to have accompanied, as is sometimes seen, an excess
of intellectual activity. He was first accused of homosexual practices
after a long stay in Bithynia with King Nikomedes, and the charge was
very often renewed. Cæsar was proud of his physical beauty, and, like
some modern inverts, he was accustomed carefully to shave and epilate his
body to preserve the smoothness of the skin. Hadrian's love for his
beautiful slave Antinoüs is well known; the love seems to have been deep
and mutual, and Antinoüs has become immortalized, partly by the romance of
his obscure death and partly by the new and strangely beautiful type which
he has given to sculpture.[44] Heliogabalus, "the most homosexual of all
the company," as he has been termed, seems to have been a true sexual
invert, of feminine type; he dressed as a woman and was devoted to the men
he loved.[45]
Homosexual practices everywhere flourish and abound in prisons. There is
abundant evidence on this point. I will only bring forward the evidence of
Dr. Wey, formerly physician to the Elmira Reformatory, New York.
"Sexuality" (he wrote in a private letter) "is one of the most troublesome
elements with which we have to contend. I have no data as to the number of
prisoners here who are sexually perverse. In my pessimistic moments I
should feel like saying that all were; but probably 80 per cent, would be
a fair estimate." And, referring to the sexual influence which some men
have over others, he remarks that "there are many men with features
suggestive of femininity that attract others to them in a way that reminds
me of a bitch in heat followed by a pack of dogs."[46] In Sing Sing prison
of New York, 20 per cent, of the prisoners are said to be actively
homosexual and a large number of the rest passively homosexual. These
prison relationships are not always of a brutal character, McMurtrie
states, the attraction sometimes being more spiritual than physical.[47]
Prison life develops and fosters the homosexual tendency of criminals; but
there can be little doubt that that tendency, or else a tendency to sexual
indifference or bisexuality, is a radical character of a very large number
of criminals. We may also find it to a considerable extent among tramps,
an allied class of undoubted degenerates, who, save for brief seasons, are
less familiar with prison life. I am able to bring forward interesting
evidence on this point by an acute observer who lived much among tramps in
various countries, and largely devoted himself to the study of them.[48]
The fact that homosexuality is especially common among men of exceptional
intellect was long since noted by Dante:—
"In somma sappi, che tutti fur cherci
E litterati grandi, et di gran fama
D'un medismo peccato al mondo lerci."[49]
It has often been noted since and remains a remarkable fact.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that intellectual and
artistic abilities of the highest order have frequently been
associated with a congenitally inverted sexual temperament. There
has been a tendency among inverts themselves to discover their
own temperament in many distinguished persons on evidence of the
most slender character. But it remains a demonstrable fact that
numerous highly distinguished persons, of the past and the
present, in various countries, have been inverts. I may here
refer to my own observations on this point in the preface.
Mantegazza (Gli Amori degli Uomini) remarks that in his own
restricted circle he is acquainted with "a French publicist, a
German poet, an Italian statesman, and a Spanish jurist, all men
of exquisite taste and highly cultivated mind," who are sexually
inverted. Krafft-Ebing, in the preface to his Psychopathia
Sexualis, referring to the "numberless" communications he has
received from these "step-children of nature," remarks that "the
majority of the writers are men of high intellectual and social
position, and often possess very keen emotions." Raffalovich
(Uranisme, p. 197) names among distinguished inverts, Alexander
the Great, Epaminondas, Virgil, the great Condé, Prince Eugène,
etc. (The question of Virgil's inversion is discussed in the
Revista di Filologia, 1890, fas. 7-9, but I have not been able
to see this review.) Moll, in his Berühmte Homosexuelle (1910,
in the series of Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens)
discusses the homosexuality of a number of eminent persons, for
the most part with his usual caution and sagacity; speaking of
the alleged homosexuality of Wagner he remarks, with entire
truth, that "the method of arguing the existence of homosexuality
from the presence of feminine traits must be decisively
rejected." Hirschfeld has more recently included in his great
work Die Homosexualität (1913, pp. 650-674) two lists, ancient
and modern, of alleged inverts among the distinguished persons of
history, briefly stating the nature of the evidence in each case.
They amount to nearly 300. Not all of them, however, can be
properly described as distinguished. Thus we end in the list 43
English names; of these at least half a dozen were noblemen who
were concerned in homosexual prosecutions, but were of no
intellectual distinction. Others, again, are of undoubted
eminence, but there is no good reason to regard them as
homosexual; this is the case, for instance, as regards Swift, who
may have been mentally abnormal, but appears to have been
heterosexual rather than homosexual; Fletcher, of whom we know
nothing definite in this respect, is also included, as well as
Tennyson, whose youthful sentimental friendship for Arthur Hallam
is exactly comparable to that of Montaigne for Etienne de la
Boëtie, yet Montaigne is not included in the list. It may be
added, however, that while some of the English names in the list
are thus extremely doubtful, it would have been possible to add
some others who were without doubt inverts.
It has not, I think, been noted—largely because the evidence was
insufficiently clear—that among moral leaders, and persons with strong
ethical instincts, there is a tendency toward the more elevated forms of
homosexual feeling. This may be traced, not only in some of the great
moral teachers of old, but also in men and women of our own day. It is
fairly evident why this should be so. Just as the repressed love of a
woman or a man has, in normally constituted persons, frequently furnished
the motive power for an enlarged philanthropic activity, so the person
who sees his own sex also bathed in sexual glamour, brings to his work of
human service an ardor wholly unknown to the normally constituted
individual; morality to him has become one with love.[50] I am not
prepared here to insist on this point, but no one, I think, who studies
sympathetically the histories and experiences of great moral leaders can
fail in many cases to note the presence of this feeling, more or less
finely sublimated from any gross physical manifestation.
If it is probable that in moral movements persons of homosexual
temperament have sometimes become prominent, it is undoubtedly true,
beyond possibility of doubt, that they have been prominent in religion.
Many years ago (in 1885) the ethnologist, Elie Reclus, in his charming
book, Les Primitifs,[51] setting forth the phenomena of homosexuality
among the Eskimo Innuit tribe, clearly insisted that from time immemorial
there has been a connection between the invert and the priest, and showed
how well this connection is illustrated by the Eskimo schupans. Much
more recently, in his elaborate study of the priest, Horneffer discusses
the feminine traits of priests and shows that, among the most various
peoples, persons of sexually abnormal and especially homosexual
temperament have assumed the functions of priesthood. To the popular eye
the unnatural is the supernatural, and the abnormal has appeared to be
specially close to the secret Power of the World. Abnormal persons are
themselves of the same opinion and regard themselves as divine. As
Horneffer points out, they often really possess special aptitude.[52]
Karsch in his Gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker (1911) has
brought out the high religious as well as social significance of castes of
cross-dressed and often homosexual persons among primitive peoples. At the
same time Edward Carpenter in his remarkable book, Intermediate Types
among Primitive Folk (1914), has shown with much insight how it comes
about that there is an organic connection between the homosexual
temperament and unusual psychic or divinatory powers. Homosexual men were
non-warlike and homosexual women non-domestic, so that their energies
sought different outlets from those of ordinary men and women; they became
the initiators of new activities. Thus it is that from among them would in
some degree issue not only inventors and craftsmen and teachers, but
sorcerers and diviners, medicine-men and wizards, prophets and priests.
Such persons would be especially impelled to thought, because they would
realize that they were different from other people; treated with reverence
by some and with contempt by others, they would be compelled to face the
problems of their own nature and, indirectly, the problems of the world
generally. Moreover, Carpenter points out, persons in whom the masculine
and feminine temperaments were combined would in many cases be persons of
intuition and complex mind beyond their fellows, and so able to exercise
divination and prophecy in a very real and natural sense.[53]
This aptitude of the invert for primitive religion, for sorcery and
divination, would have its reaction on popular feeling, more especially
when magic and the primitive forms of religion began to fall into
disrepute. The invert would be regarded as the sorcerer of a false and
evil religion and be submerged in the same ignominy. This point has been
emphasized by Westermarck in the instructive chapter on homosexuality in
his great work on Moral Ideas.[54] He points out the significance of the
fact, at the first glance apparently inexplicable, that homosexuality in
the general opinion of medieval Christianity was constantly associated,
even confounded, with heresy, as we see significantly illustrated by the
fact that in France and England the popular designation for homosexuality
is derived from the Bulgarian heretics. It was, Westermarck believes,
chiefly as a heresy and out of religious zeal that homosexuality was so
violently reprobated and so ferociously punished.
In modern Europe we find the strongest evidence of the presence of what
may fairly be called true sexual inversion when we investigate the men of
the Renaissance. The intellectual independence of those days and the
influence of antiquity seem to have liberated and fully developed the
impulses of those abnormal individuals who would otherwise have found no
clear expression, and passed unnoticed.[55]
Muret, the Humanist, may perhaps be regarded as a typical example of the
nature and fate of the superior invert of the Renaissance. Born in 1526 at
Muret (Limousin), of poor but noble family, he was of independent,
somewhat capricious character, unable to endure professors, and
consequently he was mainly his own teacher, though he often sought advice
from Jules-César Scaliger. Muret was universally admired in his day for
his learning and his eloquence, and is still regarded not only as a great
Latinist and a fine writer, but as a notable man, of high intelligence,
and remarkable, moreover, for courtesy in polemics in an age when that
quality was not too common. His portrait shows a somewhat coarse and
rustic but intelligent face. He conquered honor and respect before he died
in 1585, at the age of 59. In early life Muret wrote wanton erotic poems
to women which seem based on personal experience. But in 1553 we find him
imprisoned in the Châtelet for sodomy and in danger of his life, so that
he thought of starving himself to death. Friends, however, obtained his
release and he settled in Toulouse. But the very next year he was burnt in
effigy in Toulouse, as a Huguenot and sodomist, this being the result of a
judicial sentence which had caused him to flee from the city and from
France. Four years later he had to flee from Padua owing to a similar
accusation. He had many friends but none of them protested against the
charge, though they aided him to escape from the penalty. It is very
doubtful whether he was a Huguenot, and whenever in his works he refers to
pederasty it is with strong disapproval. But his writings reveal
passionate friendship for men, and he seems to have expended little energy
in combating a charge which, if false, was a shameful injustice to him. It
was after fleeing into Italy and falling ill of a fever from fatigue and
exposure that Muret is said to have made the famous retort (to the
physician by his bedside who had said: "Faciamus experimentum in anima
vili"): "Vilem animam appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus est
mori."[56]
A greater Humanist than Muret, Erasmus himself, seems as a young man, when
in the Augustinian monastery of Stein, to have had a homosexual attraction
to another Brother (afterward Prior) to whom he addressed many
passionately affectionate letters; his affection seems, however, to have
been unrequited.[57]
As the Renaissance developed, homosexuality seems to become more prominent
among distinguished persons. Poliziano was accused of pederasty. Aretino
was a pederast, as Pope Julius II seems also to have been. Ariosto wrote
in his satires, no doubt too extremely:—
"Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti."[58]
Tasso had a homosexual strain in his nature, but he was of weak and
feminine constitution, sensitively emotional and physically frail.[59]
It is, however, among artists, at that time and later, that homosexuality
may most notably be traced. Leonardo da Vinci, whose ideals as revealed in
his work are so strangely bisexual, lay under homosexual suspicion in his
youth. In 1476, when he was 24 years of age, charges were made against him
before the Florentine officials for the control of public morality, and
were repeated, though they do not appear to have been substantiated. There
is, however, some ground for supposing that Leonardo was imprisoned in his
youth.[60] Throughout life he loved to surround himself with beautiful
youths and his pupils were more remarkable for their attractive appearance
than for their skill; to one at least of them he was strongly attached,
while there is no record of any attachment to a woman. Freud, who has
studied Leonardo with his usual subtlety, considers that his temperament
was marked by "ideal homosexuality."[61]
Michelangelo, one of the very chief artists of the Renaissance period, we
cannot now doubt, was sexually inverted. The evidence furnished by his own
letters and poems, as well as the researches of numerous recent
workers,—Parlagreco, Scheffler, J. A. Symonds, etc.,—may be said to have
placed this beyond question.[62] He belonged to a family of 5 brothers, 4
of whom never married, and so far as is known left no offspring; the fifth
only left 1 male heir. His biographer describes Michelangelo as "a man of
peculiar, not altogether healthy, nervous temperament." He was indifferent
to women; only in one case, indeed, during his long life is there evidence
even of friendship with a woman, while he was very sensitive to the beauty
of men, and his friendships were very tender and enthusiastic. At the
same time there is no reason to suppose that he formed any physically
passionate relationships with men, and even his enemies seldom or never
made this accusation against him. We may probably accept the estimate of
his character given by Symonds:—
Michelangelo Buonarotti was one of those exceptional, but not
uncommon men who are born with sensibilities abnormally deflected
from the ordinary channel. He showed no partiality for women, and
a notable enthusiasm for the beauty of young men.... He was a man
of physically frigid temperament, extremely sensitive to beauty
of the male type, who habitually philosophized his emotions, and
contemplated the living objects of his admiration as amiable, not
only for their personal qualities, but also for their esthetical
attractiveness.[63]
A temperament of this kind seems to have had no significance for the men
of those days; they were blind to all homosexual emotion which had no
result in sodomy. Plato found such attraction a subject for sentimental
metaphysics, but it was not until nearly our own time that it again became
a subject of interest and study. Yet it undoubtedly had profound influence
on Michelangelo's art, impelling him to find every kind of human beauty in
the male form, and only a grave dignity or tenderness, divorced from every
quality that is sexually desirable, in the female form. This deeply rooted
abnormality is at once the key to the melancholy of Michelangelo and to
the mystery of his art.
Michelangelo's contemporary, the painter Bazzi (1477-1549), seems also to
have been radically inverted, and to this fact he owed his nickname
Sodoma. As, however, he was married and had children, it may be that he
was, as we should now say, of bisexual temperament. He was a great artist
who has been dealt with unjustly, partly, perhaps, because of the
prejudice of Vasari,—whose admiration for Michelangelo amounted to
worship, but who is contemptuous toward Sodoma and grudging of
praise,—partly because his work is little known out of Italy and not
very easy of access there. Reckless, unbalanced, and eccentric in his
life, Sodoma revealed in his painting a peculiar feminine softness and
warmth—which indeed we seem to see also in his portrait of himself at
Monte Oliveto Maggiore—and a very marked and tender feeling for
masculine, but scarcely virile, beauty.[64]
Cellini was probably homosexual. He was imprisoned on a charge of
unnatural vice and is himself suspiciously silent in his autobiography
concerning this imprisonment.[65]
In the seventeenth century another notable sculptor who has been termed
the Flemish Cellini, Jérôme Duquesnoy (whose still more distinguished
brother François executed the Manneken Pis in Brussels), was an invert;
having finally been accused of sexual relations with a youth in a chapel
of the Ghent Cathedral, where he was executing a monument for the bishop,
he was strangled and burned, notwithstanding that much influence,
including that of the bishop, was brought to bear in his behalf.[66]
In more recent times Winkelmann, who was the initiator of a new Greek
Renaissance and of the modern appreciation of ancient art, lies under what
seems to be a well-grounded suspicion of sexual inversion. His letters to
male friends are full of the most passionate expressions of love. His
violent death also appears to have been due to a love-adventure with a
man. The murderer was a cook, a wholly uncultivated man, a criminal who
had already been condemned to death, and shortly before murdering
Winkelmann for the sake of plunder he was found to be on very intimate
terms with him.[67] It is noteworthy that sexual inversion should so often
be found associated with the study of antiquity. It must not, however, be
too hastily concluded that this is due to suggestion and that to abolish
the study of Greek literature and art would be largely to abolish sexual
inversion. What has really occurred in those recent cases that may be
studied, and therefore without doubt in the older cases, is that the
subject of congenital sexual inversion is attracted to the study of Greek
antiquity because he finds there the explanation and the apotheosis of his
own obscure impulses. Undoubtedly that study tends to develop these
impulses.
While it is peculiarly easy to name men of distinguished ability who,
either certainly or in all probability, have been affected by homosexual
tendencies, they are not isolated manifestations. They spring out of an
element of diffused homosexuality which is at least as marked in
civilization as it is in savagery. It is easy to find illustrations in
every country. Here it may suffice to refer to France, Germany, and
England.
In France in the thirteenth century the Church was so impressed by the
prevalence of homosexuality that it reasserted the death penalty for
sodomy at the Councils of Paris (1212) and Rouen (1214), while we are told
that even by rejecting a woman's advances (as illustrated in Marie de
France's Lai de Lanval) a man fell under suspicion as a sodomist, which
was also held to involve heresy.[68] At the end of this century (about
1294) Alain de Lille was impelled to write a book, De Planctu Naturæ, in
order to call attention to the prevalence of homosexual feeling; he also
associated the neglect of women with sodomy. "Man is made woman," he
writes; "he blackens the honor of his sex, the craft of magic Venus makes
him of double gender"; nobly beautiful youths have "turned their hammers
of love to the office of anvils," and "many kisses lie untouched on maiden
lips." The result is that "the natural anvils," that is to say the
neglected maidens, "bewail the absence of their hammers and are seen sadly
to demand them." Alain de Lille makes himself the voice of this
demand.[69]
A few years later, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, sodomy was
still regarded as very prevalent. At that time it was especially
associated with the Templars who, it has been supposed, brought it from
the East. Such a supposition, however, is not required to account for the
existence of homosexuality in France. Nor is it necessary, at a somewhat
later period, to invoke, as is frequently done, the Italian origin of
Catherine de Medici, in order to explain the prevalence of homosexual
practices at her court.
Notwithstanding its prevalence, sodomy was still severely punished from
time to time. Thus in 1586, Dadon, who had formerly been Rector of the
University of Paris, was hanged and then burned for injuring a child
through sodomy.[70] In the seventeenth century, homosexuality continued,
however, to flourish, and it is said that nearly all the numerous
omissions made in the published editions of Tallement des Reaux's
Historiettes refer to sodomy.[71]
How prominent homosexuality was, in the early eighteenth century in
France, we learn from the frequent references to it in the letters of
Madame, the mother of the Regent, whose husband was himself effeminate and
probably inverted.[72] For the later years of the century the evidence
abounds on every hand. At this time the Bastille was performing a useful
function, until recently overlooked by historians, as an asile de sureté
for abnormal persons whom it was considered unsafe to leave at large.
Inverts whose conduct became too offensive to be tolerated were frequently
placed in the Bastille which, indeed "abounded in homosexual subjects," to
a greater extent than any other class of sexual perverts. Some of the
affairs which led to the Bastille have a modern air. One such case on a
large scale occurred in 1702, and reveals an organized system of
homosexual prostitution; one of the persons involved in this affair was a
handsome, well-made youth named Lebel, formerly a lackey, but passing
himself off as a man of quality. Seduced at the age of 10 by a famous
sodomist named Duplessis, he had since been at the disposition of a number
of homosexual persons, including officers, priests, and marquises. Some of
the persons involved in these affairs were burned alive; some cut their
own throats; others again were set at liberty or transferred to the
Bicêtre.[73] During the latter part of the eighteenth century, also, we
find another modern homosexual practice recognized in France; the
rendezvous or center where homosexual persons could quietly meet each
other.[74]
Inversion has always been easy to trace in Germany. Ammianus Marcellinus
bears witness to its prevalence among some German tribes in later Roman
days.[75] In mediæval times, as Schultz points out, references to sodomy
in Germany were far from uncommon. Various princes of the German Imperial
house, and of other princely families in the Middle Ages, were noted for
their intimate friendships. At a later date, attention has frequently been
called to the extreme emotional warmth which has often marked German
friendship, even when there has been no suspicion of any true homosexual
relationship.[76] The eighteenth century, in the full enjoyment of that
abandonment to sentiment initiated by Rousseau, proved peculiarly
favorable to the expansion of the tendency to sentimental friendship. On
this basis a really inverted tendency, when it existed, could easily come
to the surface and find expression. We find this well illustrated in the
poet Heinrich von Kleist who seems to have been of bisexual temperament,
and his feelings for the girl he wished to marry were, indeed, much cooler
than those for his friend. To this friend, Ernst von Pfuël (afterward
Prussian war minister), Kleist wrote in 1805 at the age of 28: "You bring
the days of the Greeks back to me; I could sleep with you, dear youth, my
whole soul so embraces you. When you used to bathe in the Lake of Thun I
would gaze with the real feelings of a girl at your beautiful body. It
would serve an artist to study from." There follows an enthusiastic
account of his friend's beauty and of the Greek "idea of the love of
youths," and Kleist concludes: "Go with me to Anspach, and let us enjoy
the sweets of friendship.... I shall never marry; you must be wife and
children to me."[77]
In all social classes and in all fields of activity, Germany during the
nineteenth century produced a long series of famous or notorious
homosexual persons. At the one end we find people of the highest
intellectual distinction, such as Alexander von Humboldt, whom Näcke, a
cautious investigator, stated that he had good ground for regarding as an
invert.[78] At the other end we find prosperous commercial and
manufacturing people who leave Germany to find solace in the free and
congenial homosexual atmosphere of Capri; of these F. A. Krupp, the head of
the famous Essen factory, may be regarded as the type.[79]
In England (and the same is true today of the United States), although
homosexuality has been less openly manifest and less thoroughly explored,
it is doubtful whether it has been less prevalent than in Germany. At an
early period, indeed, the evidence may even seem to show that it was more
prevalent. In the Penitentials of the ninth and tenth centuries "natural
fornication and sodomy" were frequently put together and the same penance
assigned to both; it was recognized that priests and bishops, as well as
laymen, might fall into this sin, though to the bishop nearly three times
as much penance was assigned as to the layman. Among the Normans,
everywhere, homosexuality was markedly prevalent; the spread of sodomy in
France about the eleventh century is attributed to the Normans, and their
coming seems to have rendered it at times almost fashionable, at all
events at court. In England William Rufus was undoubtedly inverted, as
later on were Edward II, James I, and, perhaps, though not in so
conspicuous a degree, William III.[80]
Ordericus Vitalis, who was himself half Norman and half English, says that
the Normans had become very effeminate in his time, and that after the
death of William the Conqueror sodomy was common both in England and
Normandy. Guillaume de Nangis, in his chronicle for about 1120, speaking
of the two sons of Henry and the company of young nobles who went down
with them, in the White Ship, states that nearly all were considered to
be sodomists, and Henry of Huntingdon, in his History, looked upon the
loss of the White Ship as a judgment of heaven upon sodomy. Anselm, in
writing to Archdeacon William to inform him concerning the recent Council
at London (1102), gives advice as to how to deal with people who have
committed the sin of sodomy, and instructs him not to be too harsh with
those who have not realized its gravity, for hitherto "this sin has been
so public that hardly anyone has blushed for it, and many, therefore, have
plunged into it without realizing its gravity."[81] So temperate a remark
by a man of such unquestionably high character is more significant of the
prevalence of homosexuality than much denunciation.
In religious circles far from courts and cities, as we might expect,
homosexuality was regarded with great horror, though even here we may
discover evidence of its wide prevalence. Thus in the remarkable
Revelation of the Monk of Evesham, written in English in 1196, we find
that in the very worst part of Purgatory are confined an innumerable
company of sodomists (including a wealthy, witty, and learned divine, a
doctor of laws, personally known to the Monk), and whether these people
would ever be delivered from Purgatory was a matter of doubt; of the
salvation of no other sinners does the Monk of Evesham seem so dubious.
Sodomy had always been an ecclesiastical offense. The Statute of 1533 (25
Henry VIII, c. 6) made it a felony; and Pollock and Maitland consider that
this "affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not
punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it, for a very long
time past."[82] The temporal law has never, however, proved very
successful in repressing homosexuality. At this period the Renaissance
movement was reaching England, and here as elsewhere it brought with it,
if not an increase, at all events a rehabilitation and often an
idealization of homosexuality.[83]
An eminent humanist and notable pioneer in dramatic literature, Nicholas
Udall, to whom is attributed Ralph Roister Doister, the first English
comedy, stands out as unquestionably addicted to homosexual tastes,
although he has left no literary evidence of this tendency. He was an
early adherent of the Protestant movement, and when head-master of Eton he
was noted for his love of inflicting corporal punishment on the boys.
Tusser says he once received from Udall 53 stripes for "fault but small or
none at all." Here there was evidently a sexual sadistic impulse, for in
1541 (the year of Ralph Roister Doister) Udall was charged with
unnatural crime and confessed his guilt before the Privy Council. He was
dismissed from the head-mastership and imprisoned, but only for a short
time, "and his reputation," his modern biographer states, "was not
permanently injured." He retained the vicarage of Braintree, and was much
favored by Edward VI, who nominated him to a prebend of Windsor. Queen
Mary was also favorable and he became head-master of Westminster
School.[84]
An Elizabethan lyrical poet of high quality, whose work has had the honor
of being confused with Shakespeare's, Richard Barnfield, appears to have
possessed the temperament, at least, of the invert. His poems to male
friends are of so impassioned a character that they aroused the protests
of a very tolerant age. Very little is known of Barnfield's life. Born in
1574 he published his first poem, The Affectionate Shepherd, at the age
of 20, while still at the University. It was issued anonymously, revealed
much fresh poetic feeling and literary skill, and is addressed to a youth
of whom the poet declares:—
"If it be sin to love a lovely lad,
Oh then sin I."
In his subsequent volume, Cynthia (1595), Barnfield disclaims any
intention in the earlier poem beyond that of imitating Virgil's second
eclogue. But the sonnets in this second volume are even more definitely
homosexual than the earlier poem, though he goes on to tell how at last he
found a lass whose beauty surpassed that
"of the swain
Whom I never could obtain."
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]
Concerning another great modern writer—Paul Verlaine, the first of modern
French poets—it seems possible to speak with less hesitation. A man who
possessed in fullest measure the irresponsible impressionability of
genius, Verlaine—as his work shows and as he himself admitted—all his
life oscillated between normal and homosexual love, at one period
attracted to women, at another to men. He was without doubt, it seems to
me, bisexual. An early connection with another young poet, Arthur Rimbaud,
terminated in a violent quarrel with his friend, and led to Verlaine's
imprisonment at Mons. In after-years he gave expression to the exalted
passion of this relationship—mon grand péché radieux—in Læti et
Errabundi, published in the volume entitled Parallèlement; and in later
poems he has told of less passionate and less sensual relationships which
yet were more than friendship, for instance, in the poem, "Mon ami, ma
plus belle amitié, ma Meilleure" in Bonheur.[100]
In this brief glance at some of the ethnographical, historical, religious,
and literary aspects of homosexual passion there is one other phenomenon
which may be mentioned. This is the alleged fact that, while the phenomena
exist to some extent everywhere, we seem to find a special proclivity to
homosexuality (whether or not involving a greater frequency of congenital
inversion is not usually clear) among certain races and in certain
regions.[101] In Europe this would be best illustrated by the case of
southern Italy, which in this respect is held to be distinct from northern
Italy, although Italians generally are franker than men of northern race
in admitting their sexual practices.[102] How far the supposed greater
homosexuality of southern Italy may be due to Greek influence and Greek
blood it is not very easy to say.
It must be remembered that, in dealing with a northern country like
England, homosexual phenomena do not present themselves in the same way as
they do in southern Italy today, or in ancient Greece. In Greece the
homosexual impulse was recognized and idealized; a man could be an open
homosexual lover, and yet, like Epaminondas, be a great and honored
citizen of his country. There was no reason whatever why a man, who in
mental and physical constitution was perfectly normal, should not adopt a
custom that was regarded as respectable, and sometimes as even specially
honorable. But it is quite otherwise today in a country like England or
the United States.[103] In these countries all our traditions and all our
moral ideals, as well as the law, are energetically opposed to every
manifestation of homosexual passion. It requires a very strong impetus to
go against this compact social force which, on every side, constrains the
individual into the paths of heterosexual love. That impetus, in a
well-bred individual who leads the normal life of his fellow-men and who
feels the ordinary degree of respect for the social feeling surrounding
him, can only be supplied by a fundamental—usually, it is probable,
inborn—perversion of the sexual instinct, rendering the individual
organically abnormal. It is with this fundamental abnormality, usually
called sexual inversion, that we shall here be concerned. There is no
evidence to show that homosexuality in Greece was a congenital perversion,
although it appears that Cœlius Aurelianus affirms that in the
opinion of Parmenides it was hereditary. Aristotle also, in his fragment
on physical love, though treating the whole matter with indulgence, seems
to have distinguished abnormal congenital homosexuality from acquired
homosexual vice. Doubtless in a certain proportion of cases the impulse
was organic, and it may well be that there was an organic and racial
predisposition to homosexuality among the Greeks, or, at all events, the
Dorians. But the state of social feeling, however it originated, induced a
large proportion of the ordinary population to adopt homosexuality as a
fashion, or, it may be said, the environment was peculiarly favorable to
the development of latent homosexual tendencies. So that any given number
of homosexual persons among the Greeks would have presented a far smaller
proportion of constitutionally abnormal individuals than a like number in
England. In a similar manner—though I do not regard the analogy as
complete—infanticide or the exposition of children was practised in some
of the early Greek States by parents who were completely healthy and
normal; in England a married woman who destroys her child is in nearly
every case demonstrably diseased or abnormal. For this reason I am unable
to see that homosexuality in ancient Greece—while of great interest as a
social and psychological problem—throws light on sexual inversion as we
know it in England or the United States.
Concerning the wide prevalence of sexual inversion and of homosexual
phenomena generally, there can be no manner of doubt. This question has
been most fully investigated in Germany. In Berlin, Moll states that he
has himself seen between 600 and 700 homosexual persons and heard of some
250 to 350 others. Hirschfeld states that he has known over 10,000
homosexual persons.
There are, I am informed, several large cafés in Berlin which are almost
exclusively patronized by inverts who come here to flirt and make
acquaintances; as these cafés are frequented by male street prostitutes
(Pupenjunge) the invert risks being blackmailed or robbed if he goes home
or to a hotel with a café acquaintance. There are also a considerable
number of homosexual Kneipen, small and unpretentious bar-rooms, which
are really male brothels, the inmates being sexually normal working men
and boys, out of employment or in quest of a few marks as pocket money;
these places are regarded by inverts as very safe, as the proprietors
insist on good order and allow no extortion, while the police, though of
course aware of their existence, never interfere. Homosexual cafés for
women are also found in Berlin.
There is some reason for believing that homosexuality is especially
prominent in Germany and among Germans. I have elsewhere referred to the
highly emotional and sentimental traits which have frequently marked
German friendships. Germany is the only country in which there is a
definite and well-supported movement for the defense and social
rehabilitation of inverts. The study of sexual inversion began in Germany,
and the scientific and literary publications dealing with homosexuality
issued from the German press probably surpass in quantity and importance
those issued from all other countries put together. The homosexual
tendencies of Germans outside Germany have been noted in various
countries. Among my English cases I have found that a strain of German
blood occurs much more frequently than we are entitled to expect; Parisian
prostitutes are said to be aware of the homosexual tastes of Germans; it
is significant that (as a German invert familiar with Turkey informed
Näcke), at Constantinople, the procurers, who naturally supply girls as
well as youths, regard Germans and Austrians as more tending to
homosexuality than the foreigners from any other land. Germans usually
deny, however, that there is any special German proclivity to inversion,
and it would not appear that such statistics as are available (though all
such statistics cannot be regarded as more than approximations) show any
pronounced predominance of inversion among Germans. It is to Hirschfeld
that we owe the chief attempt to gain some notion of the percentage of
homosexual persons among the general population.[104] It may be said to
vary in different regions and more especially in different occupations,
from 1 to 10 per cent. But the average when the individuals belonging to a
large number of groups are combined is generally found to be rather over 2
per cent. So that there are about a million and a half inverted persons in
Germany.[105] This would be a minimum which can scarcely fail to be below
the actual proportion, as no one can be certain that he is acquainted with
the real proclivities of all the persons comprising a larger group of
acquaintances.[106] It is not found in the estimates which have reached
Hirschfeld that the French groups show a smaller proportion of homosexual
persons than the German groups, and a Japanese group comes out near to
the general average for the whole. Various authorities, especially
Germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common in France as in
Germany.[107] Saint-Paul ("Dr. Laupts"), on the other hand, is unable to
accept this view. As an army surgeon who has long served in Africa he can
(as also Rebierre in his Joyeux et demifous) bear witness to the
frequency of homosexuality among the African battalions of the French
army, especially in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the French
army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general population.[108]
Näcke is also inclined to believe that homosexuality is rarer in Celtic
lands, and in the Latin countries generally, than in Teutonic and Slavonic
lands, and believes that it may be a question of race.[109] The question
is still undecided. It is possible that the undoubted fact that
homosexuality is less conspicuous in France and the other Latin countries
than in Teutonic lands, may be due not to the occurrence of a smaller
proportion of congenital inverts in the former lands, but mainly to
general difference in temperament and in the social reaction.[110] The
French idealize and emphasize the place of women to a much greater degree
than the Germans, while at the same time inverts in France have much less
occasion than in Germany to proclaim their legal grievances. Apart from
such considerations as these it seems very doubtful whether inborn
inversion is in any considerable degree rarer in France than in Germany.
As to the frequency of homosexuality in England[111] and the United
States there is much evidence. In England its manifestations are well
marked for those whose eyes have once been opened. The manifestations are
of the same character as those in Germany, modified by social and national
differences, and especially by the greater reserve, Puritanism, and
prudery of England.[112] In the United States these same influences exert
a still greater effect in restraining the outward manifestations of
homosexuality. Hirschfeld, though so acute and experienced in the
investigation of homosexuality, states that when visiting Philadelphia and
Boston he could scarcely detect any evidence of homosexuality, though he
was afterward assured by those acquainted with local conditions that its
extension in both cities is "colossal." There have been numerous criminal
cases and scandals in the United States in which homosexuality has come to
the surface, and the very frequently occurring cases of transvestism or
cross-dressing in the States seem to be in a large proportion associated
with homosexuality.
In the opinion of some, English homosexuality has become much more
conspicuous during recent years, and this is sometimes attributed to the
Oscar Wilde case. No doubt, the celebrity of Oscar Wilde and the universal
publicity given to the facts of the case by the newspapers may have
brought conviction of their perversion to many inverts who were before
only vaguely conscious of their abnormality, and, paradoxical though it
may seem, have imparted greater courage to others; but it can scarcely
have sufficed to increase the number of inverts. Rather, one may say, the
development of urban life renders easier the exhibition and satisfaction
of this as of all other forms of perversion. Regarding the proportion of
inverts among the general population, it is very difficult to speak
positively. The invert himself is a misleading guide because he has formed
round himself a special coterie of homosexual persons, and, moreover, he
is sometimes apt to overestimate the number of inverts through the
misinterpretation of small indications that are not always conclusive.
The estimate of the ordinary normal person, feeling the ordinary disgust
toward abnormal phenomena, is also misleading, because his homosexual
acquaintances are careful not to inform him concerning their proclivities.
A writer who has studied the phenomena of homosexuality is apt to be
misguided in the same way as the invert himself, and to overestimate the
prevalence of the perversion. Striving to put aside this source of
fallacy, and only considering those individuals with whom I have been
brought in contact by the ordinary circumstances of life, and with whose
modes of feeling I am acquainted, I am still led to the conclusion that
the proportion is considerable. Among the professional and most cultured
element of the middle class in England, there must be a distinct
percentage of inverts which may sometimes be as much as 5 per cent.,
though such estimates must always be hazardous. Among women of the same
class the percentage seems to be at least double, though here the
phenomena are less definite and deep-seated. This seems to be a moderate
estimate for this class, which includes, however, it must be remembered, a
considerable proportion of individuals who are somewhat abnormal in other
respects. As we descend the scale the phenomena are doubtless less common,
though when we reach the working class we come to that comparative
indifference to which allusion has already been made. Taken altogether we
may probably conclude that the proportion of inverts is the same as in
other related and neighboring lands, that is to say, slightly over 2 per
cent. That would give the homosexual population of Great Britain as
somewhere about a million.
[1]
Taking all its forms en bloc, as they are known to the
police, homosexuality is seen to possess formidable proportions. Thus in
France, from official papers which passed through M. Carlier's bureau
during ten years (1860-70), he compiled a list of 6342 pederasts who came
within the cognizance of the police; 2049 Parisians, 3709 provincials, and
584 foreigners. Of these, 3432, or more than the half, could not be
convicted of illegal acts.
[2]
The chief general collection of data (not here drawn upon)
concerning homosexuality among animals is by the zoölogist Prof. Karsch,
"Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Tieren," Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen, vol. ii. Brehm's Tierleben also contains many examples.
See also a short chapter (ch. xxix) in Hirschfeld's Homosexualität.
[3]
H. Sainte-Claire Deville, "De l'Internat et son influence sur
l'education de la jeunesse," a paper read to the Académie des Sciences
Morales et Politiques, July 27, 1871, and quoted by Chevalier,
L'Inversion Sexuelle, pp. 204-5.
[4]
M. Bombarda, Comptes rendus Congrès Internationale de
l'Anthropologie Criminelle, Amsterdam, p. 212.
[5]
Lacassagne, "De la Criminalité chez les Animaux," Revue
Scientifique, 1882.
[6]
Steinach, "Utersuchungen zu vergleichende Physiologie,"
Archiv für die Gesammte Physiologie, Bd. lvi, 1894, p. 320.
[7]
Féré, Comptes-rendus Société de Biologie, July 30, 1898. We
may perhaps connect this with an observation of E. Selous (Zoölogist,
May and Sept., 1901) on a bird, the Great Crested Grebe; after pairing,
the male would crouch to the female, who played his part to him; the same
thing is found among pigeons. Selous suggests that this is a relic of
primitive hermaphroditism. But it may be remembered that in the male
generally sexual intercourse tends to be more exhausting than in the
female; this fact would favor a reversion of their respective parts.
[8]
E. Selous, "Sexual Selection in Birds," Zoölogist, Feb.,
1907, p. 65; ib., May, p. 169. Sexual aberrations generally are not
uncommon among birds; see, e.g., A. Heim, "Sexuelle Verirrungen bei
Vögeln in den Tropen," Sexual-Probleme, April, 1913.
[9]
See Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis, 1898,
Bd. i, pp. 369, 374-5. For a summary of facts concerning homosexuality in
animals see F. Karsch, "Päderastie und Tribadie bei den Tieren auf Grund
der Literatur," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. ii, 1899, pp.
126-154
[10]
Muccioli, "Degenerazione e Criminalità nei Colombi,"
Archivio di Psichiatria, 1893, p. 40.
[11]
L'Intermédiare des Biologistes, November 20, 1897.
[12]
R. I. Pocock, Field, 25 Oct., 1913.
[13]
R. S. Rutherford, "Crowing Hens," Poultry, January 26,
1896.
[14]
This has now been very thoroughly done by Prof. F.
Karsch-Haack in a large book, Das Gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der
Naturvölker, 1911. An earlier and shorter study by the same author was
published in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii, 1901.
[15]
See a brief and rather inconclusive treatment of the
question by Bruns Meissner, "Assyriologische Studien," iv, Mitteilungen
der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1907.
[16]
Monatshefte für praktische Dermatologie, Bd. xxix, 1899,
p. 409.
[17]
Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, p. 739.
[18]
Beardmore also notes that sodomy is "regularly indulged in"
in New Guinea on this account. (Journal of the Anthropological
Institute, May, 1890, p. 464.)
[19]
I have been told by medical men in India that it is
specially common among the Sikhs, the finest soldier-race in India.
[20]
Foley, Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, October
9, 1879.
[21]
See, e.g., O. Kiefer, "Plato's Stellung zu
Homosexualität," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. vii.
[22]
Bethe, op. cit., p. 440. In old Japan (before the
revolution of 1868) also, however, according to F. S. Krauss (Das
Geschlechtsleben der Japaner, ch. xiii, 1911), the homosexual relations
between knights and their pages resembled those of ancient Greece.
[23]
Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 1906, p. 106.
[24]
Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1914, Heft 2, p. 73.
[25]
Among the Sarts of Turkestan a class of well-trained and
educated homosexual prostitutes, resembling those found in China and many
regions of northern Asia, bearing also the same name of batsha, are said
to be especially common because fostered by the scarcity of women through
polygamy and by the women's ignorance and coarseness. The institution of
the batsha is supposed to have come to Turkestan from Persia. (Herman,
"Die Päderastie bei den Sarten," Sexual-Probleme, June, 1911.) This
would seem to suggest that Persia may have been a general center of
diffusions of this kind of refined homosexuality in northern Asia.
[26]
Morache, art. "Chine," Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des
Sciences Médicales; Matignon, "La Péderastie en Chine," Archives
d'Anthropologie Criminelle, Jan., 1899; Von der Choven, summarized in
Archives de Neurologie, March, 1907; Scié-Ton-Fa, "L'Homosexualité en
Chine," Revue de l'Hypnotisme, April, 1909.
[27]
Moeurs des Peuples de l'Inde, 1825, vol. i, part ii, ch.
xii. In Lahore and Lucknow, as quoted by Burton, Daville describes "men
dressed as women, with flowing locks under crowns of flowers, imitating
the feminine walk and gestures, voice and fashion of speech, ogling their
admirer with all the coquetry of bayaderes."
[28]
Voyages and Travels, 1814, part ii, p. 47.
[29]
A. Lisiansky, Voyage, etc., London, 1814, p. 1899.
[30]
Ethnographische Skizzen, 1855, p. 121.
[31]
C. F. P. von Martius, Zur Ethnographie Amerika's, Leipzig,
1867, Bd. i, p. 74. In Ancient Mexico Bernal Diaz wrote: Erant quasi
omnes sodomia commaculati, et adolescentes multi, muliebriter vestiti,
ibant publice, cibum quarentes ab isto diabolico et abominabili labore.
[32]
Hammond, Sexual Impotence, pp. 163-174.
[33]
New York Medical Journal, Dec. 7, 1889.
[34]
J. Turnbull, "A Voyage Round the World in the Year 1800,"
etc., 1813, p. 382.
[35]
Annales d'Hygiène et de Médecine Coloniale, 1899, p. 494.
[36]
Oskar Baumann, "Conträre Sexual-Erscheinungen bei die
Neger-Bevölkerung Zanzibars," Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1899, Heft 6,
p. 668.
[37]
Rev. J. H. Weeks, Journal Anthropological Institute, 1909,
p. 449. I am informed by a medical correspondent in the United States that
inversion is extremely prevalent among American negroes. "I have good
reason to believe," he writes, "that it is far more prevalent among them
than among the white people of any nation. If inversion is to be regarded
as a penalty of 'civilization' this is remarkable. Perhaps, however, the
Negro, relatively to his capacity, is more highly civilized than we are;
at any rate his civilization has been thrust upon him, and not acquired
through the long throes of evolution. Colored inverts desire white men as
a rule, but are not averse to men of their own race. I believe that 10 per
cent, of Negroes in the United States are sexually inverted."
[38]
Among the Papuans of German New Guinea, where the women have
great power, marriage is late, and the young men are compelled to live
separated from the women in communal houses. Here, says Moskowski
(Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1911, Heft 2, p. 339), homosexual orgies
are openly carried on.
[39]
C. G. Seligmann, "Sexual Inversion Among Primitive Races,"
Alienist and Neurologist, Jan., 1902. In a tale of the Western Solomon
Islands, reported by J. C. Wheeler (Anthropophyteia, vol. ix, p. 376) we
find a story of a man who would be a woman, and married another man and
did woman's work.
[40]
Hardman, "Habits and Customs of Natives of Kimberley,
Western Australia," Proceedings Royal Irish Academy, 3d series, vol. i,
1889, p. 73.
[41]
Klaatsch, "Some Notes on Scientific Travel Amongst the Black
Populations of Tropic Australia," Adelaide meeting of Australian
Association for the Advancement of Science, January, 1907, p. 5.
[42]
In further illustration of this I have been told that among
the common people there is often no feeling against connection with a
woman per anum.
[43]
Chevalier (L'Inversion Sexuelle, pp. 85-106) brings
forward a considerable amount of evidence regarding homosexuality at Rome
under the emperors. See also Moll, Konträre Sexualempfindung, 1899, pp.
56-66, and Hirschfeld, Homosexualität, 1913, pp. 789-806. On the
literary side, Petronius best reveals the homosexual aspect of Roman life
about the time of Tiberius.
[44]
J. A. Symonds wrote an interesting essay on this subject; see
also Kiefer, Jahrbuch f. sex. Zwischenstufen, vol. viii, 1906.
[45]
See L. von Scheffler, "Elagabal," Jahrbuch f. sex.
Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901; also Duviquet, Héliogabale (Mercure de
France).
[46]
The following note has been furnished to me: "Balzac, in
Une Dernière Incarnation de Vautrin, describes the morals of the French
bagnes. Dostoieffsky, in Prison-Life in Siberia, touches on the same
subject. See his portrait of Sirotkin, p. 52 et seq., p. 120 (edition J.
and R. Maxwell, London). We may compare Carlier, Les Deux Prostitutions,
pp. 300-1, for an account of the violence of homosexual passions in French
prisons. The initiated are familiar with the fact in English prisons.
Bouchard, in his Confessions, Paris, Liseux, 1881, describes the convict
station at Marseilles in 1630." Homosexuality among French recidivists at
Saint-Jean-du-Maroni in French Guiana has been described by Dr. Cazanova,
Arch. d'Anth. Crim., January, 1906, p. 44. See also Davitt's Leaves
from a Prison Diary, and Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist; also
Rebierre, Joyeux et Demifous, 1909.
[47]
D. McMurtrie, Chicago Medical Recorder, January, 1914.
[48]
See Appendix A: "Homosexuality among Tramps," by "Josiah
Flynt."
[49]
Inferno, xv. The place of homosexuality in the Divine
Comedy itself has been briefly studied by Undine Freün von Verschuer,
Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. viii, 1906.
[50]
Hirschfeld and others have pointed out, very truly, that
inverts are less prone than normal persons to regard caste and social
position. This innately democratic attitude renders it easier for them
than for ordinary people to rise to what Cyples has called the "ecstasy of
humanity," the emotional attitude, that is to say, of those rare souls of
whom it may be said, in the same writer's words, that "beggars' rags to
their unhesitating lips grew fit for kissing because humanity had touched
the garb." Edward Carpenter (Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk, p.
83) remarks that great ethical leaders have often exhibited feminine
traits, and adds: "It becomes easy to suppose of those early figures—who
once probably were men—those Apollos, Buddhas, Dionysus, Osiris, and so
forth—to suppose that they too were somewhat bisexual in temperament, and
that it was really largely owing to that fact that they were endowed with
far-reaching powers and became leaders of mankind."
[51]
English translation, Primitive Folk, in Contemporary
Science series.
[52]
R. Horneffer, Der Priester, 2 vols., 1912. J. G. Frazer, in
the volume entitled "Adonis, Attis, Osiris" (pp. 428-435) of the third
edition of his Golden Bough, discusses priests dressed as women, and
finds various reasons for the custom.
[53]
Edward Carpenter, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk,
1914.
[54]
Westermarck, Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, vol.
ii, ch. xliii.
[55]
"Italian literature," remarks Symonds, "can show the Rime
Burlesche, Becadelli's Hermaphroditus, the Canti Carnascialeschi, the
Macaronic poems of Fidentius, and the remarkably outspoken romance
entitled Alcibiade Fanciullo a Scola."
[56]
The life of Muret has been well written by C. Dejob,
Marc-Antoine Muret, 1881.
[57]
F. M. Nichols, Epistles of Erasmus, vol. i, pp. 44-55.
[58]
Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance, vol. ii,
Excursus ci.
[59]
F. de Gaudenzi in ch. v of his Studio Psico-patologico
sopra T. Tasso (1899) deals fully with the poet's homosexual tendencies.
[60]
Herbert P. Horne, Leonardo da Vinci, 1903, p. 12.
[61]
S. Freud, Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci,
1910.
[62]
See Parlagreco, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Naples, 1888;
Ludwig von Scheffler, Michelangelo: Ein Renaissance Studie, 1892;
Archivo di Psichiatria, vol. xv, fasc. i, ii, p. 129; J. A. Symonds,
Life of Michelangelo, 1893; Dr. Jur. Numa Praetorius, "Michel Angelo's
Urningtum," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. ii, 1899, pp,
254-267.
[63]
J. A. Symonds, Life of Michelangelo, vol. ii, p. 384.
[64]
Sodoma's life and temperament have been studied and his
pictures copiously reproduced by Elisár von Kupffer, Jahrbuch für
sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. ix, 1908, p. 71 et seq., and by R. H.
Hobart Cust, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi.
[65]
Cellini, Life, translated by J. A. Symonds, introduction,
p. xxxv, and p. 448. Queringhi (La Psiche di B. Cellini, 1913) argues
that Cellini was not homosexual.
[66]
See the interesting account of Duquesnoy by Eekhoud
(Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. ii, 1899), an eminent Belgian
novelist who has himself been subjected to prosecution on account of the
pictures of homosexuality in his novels and stories, Escal-Vigor and Le
Cycle Patibulaire (see Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iii,
1901).
[67]
See Justi's Life of Winkelmann, and also Moll's Die
Konträre Sexualempfindung, third edition, 1899, pp. 122-126. In this
work, as well as in Raffalovich's Uranisme et Unisexualité, as also in
Moll's Berühmte Homosexuelle (1910) and Hirschfeld's Die
Homosexualität, p. 650 et seq., there will be found some account of
many eminent men who are, on more or less reliable grounds, suspected of
homosexuality. Other German writers brought forward as inverted are
Platen, K. P. Moritz, and Iffland. Platen was clearly a congenital invert,
who sought, however, the satisfaction of his impulses in Platonic
friendship; his homosexual poems and the recently published unabridged
edition of his diary render him an interesting object of study; see for a
sympathetic account of him, Ludwig Frey, "Aus dem Seelenleben des Grafen
Platen," Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vols. i and vi. Various
kings and potentates have been mentioned in this connection, including the
Sultan Baber; Henri III of France; Edward II, William II, James I, and
William III of England, and perhaps Queen Anne and George III, Frederick
the Great and his brother, Heinrich, Popes Paul II, Sixtus IV, and Julius
II, Ludwig II of Bavaria, and others. Kings, indeed, seem peculiarly
inclined to homosexuality.
[68]
Schultz, Das Höfische Leben, Bd. i, ch. xiii.
[69]
De Planctu Naturæ has been translated by Douglas Moffat,
Yale Studies in English, No. xxxvi, 1908.
[70]
P. de l'Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, vol. ii, p. 326.
[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 Cæsar, 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 divertissement. 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]
Sérieux and Libert, "La Bastille et ses Prisonniers,"
L'Encéphale, September, 1911.
[74]
Witry, "Notes Historiques sur l'Homosexualité en France,"
Revue de l'Hypnotisme, January, 1909.
[75]
In early Teutonic days there was little or no trace of any
punishment for homosexual practices in Germany. This, according to Hermann
Michaëlis, 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
Unisexualité, pp. 157-9. See also Birnbaum, Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen, Bd. viii, p. 611; he especially illustrates 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 homosexual
strain, in the Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens series.
[78]
Alexander's not less distinguished brother, Wilhelm von
Humboldt, though not homosexual, possessed, a woman wrote to him, "the
soul of a woman and the most tender feeling for womanliness I have ever
found in your sex;" he himself admitted the feminine traits in his nature.
Spranger (Wilhelm von Humboldt, p. 288) says of him that "he had that
dual sexuality 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 à Capri," L'Européen, 29 November, 1902. It is not,
however, definitely agreed that Krupp was of fully developed homosexual
temperament (see, e.g., Jahrbuch f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. v, p.
1303 et seq.) An account of his life at Capri was published in the
Vorwärts, 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
assertion, and implies that it was supported by the English who at that
time came over to Paris with the English Ambassador, 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 homosexual
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 appetite. 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 passage of
Coleridge's is interesting as an early English recognition by a
distinguished man of genius of what may be termed ideal homosexuality.
[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
homosexual topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was "for
the most part but an amusement and had little serious or personal in it."
Those readers of Barnfield, however, who are acquainted with homosexual
literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his
poems. This is also the opinion of Moll in his Berühmte Homosexuelle.
[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 homosexuality, "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 homosexuality in
London are chiefly based on the volumes of Select Trials at the Old
Bailey, published in 1734.
[90]
Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle 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 sexual
side, he was probably of bisexual temperament; Raffalovich (Uranisme et
Unisexualité, p. 309) is of the same opinion.
[91]
A youthful attraction of this kind in a poet is well
illustrated by Dolben, who died at the age of nineteen. In addition to a
passion 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 Unisexualité, 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. André Gide's little volume of
reminiscences, Oscar Wilde (also translated into English), is well worth
reading. Wilde has been discussed in relation to homosexuality by Numa
Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901). An
instructive document, 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 sexual 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 sexual 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 heterosexual 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 homosexual strain in Walt Whitman has been more or
less definitely admitted by various writers, the most vigorous attempts to
present the homosexual 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 entitled 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 passion
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 homosexual 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. Escoube, in a judicious essay (included in Préférences, 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
passionate 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 sexual 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 passive pedicatio as disgraceful, but attach little or
no shame to active pedicatio. This indifference enables them to exploit
the homosexual foreigners who are specially attracted to southern Italy in
the development of a flourishing homosexual industry.
[103]
It is true that in the solitude of great modern cities it
is possible for small homosexual 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.
[104]
See especially Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, chs. xxiv
and xxv.
[105]
Ulrichs, in his Argonauticus, in 1869, estimated the
number as only 25,000, but admitted that this was probably a decided
underestimate. Bloch (Die Prostitution, Bd. i, p. 792) has found reason
to believe that in Cologne in the fifteenth century the percentage was
nearly as high as Hirschfeld finds it today. A few years earlier Bloch had
believed (Beiträge, part i, p. 215, 1902) that Hirschfeld's estimate of
2 per cent, was "sheer nonsense."
[106]
Hirschfeld mentions the case of two men, artists, one of
them married, who were intimate friends for a great many years before each
discovered that the other was an invert.
[107]
See articles by Numa Praetorius and Fernan, maintaining
that homosexuality is at least as frequent in France (Sexual-Probleme,
March and December, 1909).
[108]
Dr. Laupts, L'Homosexualité, 1910, pp. 413, 420.
[109]
Näcke, Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1908, Heft 6.
[110]
It is a fact significant of the French attitude toward
homosexuality that the psychologist, Dr. Saint-Paul, when writing a book
on this subject, though in a completely normal and correct manner, thought
it desirable to adopt a pseudonym.
[111]
A well-informed series of papers dealing with English
homosexuality generally, and especially with London (L. Pavia, "Die
männliche Homosexualität in England," Vierteljahrsberichte des
wissenschaftlich-humanitären Komitees, 1909-1911) will be found
instructive even by those who are familiar with London. And see also
Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualität, ch. xxvi. Much information of historical
nature concerning homosexuality in England will be found in Eugen Dühren
(Iwan Bloch), Das Geschlechtsleben in England.
[112]
This: is doubtless the reason why so many English inverts
establish themselves outside England. Paris, Florence, Nice, Naples,
Cairo, and other places, are said to swarm with homosexual Englishmen. |
