Sexual Heretics

Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850-1900

Brian Reade

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415790543
• eBook ISBN: 9781351816830
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The years between 1850 and 1900 were the vintage years of a discreet homosexual culture in England. In this period, educational, personal and foreign influences all contributed to the establishment of a trend expressed in the works of authors such as John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, and A.E. Housman, and in those of lesser writers, now largely forgotten. This book, first published in 1970, is an anthology of English prose and verse, either homosexual in tone or providing a vehicle for homosexual emotions, and in several examples even overtly and experimentally frank. The book includes an introduction by Brian Reade explaining the network of friendships and associations which underlay this development and tracing some of its origins.

1 Schooldays

Leigh Hunt. From The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Published 1850. The extract is taken from Chapter IV.

If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ-Hospital, the school would be ever dear to me from the recollection of the friendships I formed in it, and of the first heavenly taste it gave me of that most spiritual of the affections. I use the word ‘heavenly’ advisedly; and I call friendship the most spiritual of the affections, because even one’s kindred, in partaking of our flesh and blood, become, in a manner, mixed up with our entire being. Not that I would disparage any other form of affection, worshipping, as I do, all forms of it, love in particular, which, in its highest state, is friendship and something more. But if ever I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of any maturer feeling. I shall never forget the impression it first made on me. I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candour, his truth, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking whatsoever. I should say, in one word, it was his goodness. I doubt whether he ever had a conception of a tithe of the regard and respect I entertained for him; and I smile to think of the perplexity (though he never showed it) which he probably felt sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a kind of angel. It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the unspiritual part of it, – the genius and the knowledge – and there is no height of conceit indulged in by the most romantic character in Shakespeare, which surpassed what I felt towards the merits I ascribed to him, and the delight which I took in his society. With the other Boy’s I played antics, and rioted in fantastic jests; but in his society, or whenever I thought of him, I fell into a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I am sure I could have died for him.

I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into the world and forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in more than one instance, became rivalled by a new set of emotions, especially in regard to the last, for I fell in love with his sister – at least, I thought so. But on the occurrence of her death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume an air of greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to be relieved by the sight of the first pretty face that turned towards me. I was in the situation of the page in Figaro:

Ogni donna cangiar di colore;

Ogni donna mi fa palpitar.

My friend, who died himself not long after his quitting the University, was of a German family in the service of the court, very refined and musical. I likened them to the people in the novels of Augustus La Fontaine; and with the younger of the two sisters I had a great desire to play the part of the hero in the Family of Halden.

2 In Memoriam

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Published 1850. The verses are taken from various sections.

IV

To Sleep I give my powers away;

My will is bondsman to the dark;

I sit within a helmless bark,

And with my heart I muse and say:

O heart how fares it with thee now,

That thou should’st fail from thy desire,

Who scarcely darest to inquire,

What is it makes me beat so low?’

Something it is which thou hast lost,

Some pleasure from thine early years.

Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,

That grief hath shaken into frost!

Such clouds of nameless trouble cross

All night below the darken’d eyes;

With morning wakes the will, and cries,

‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss’.

V

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,

A use in measured language lies;

The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,

Like coarsest clothes against the cold:

But that large grief which these enfold

Is given in outline and no more.

XIII

Tears of the widower, when he sees

A late-lost form that sleep reveals,

And moves his doubtful arms, and feels

Her place is empty, fall like these;

Which weep a loss for ever new,

A void where heart on heart reposed;

And, where warm hands have prest and closed,

Silence, till I be silent too.

Which weep the comrade of my choice,

An awful thought, a life removed,

The human-hearted man I loved,

A Spirit, not a breathing voice.

XVIII

Tis Well; ‘tis something; we may stand

Where he in English earth is laid,

And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.

‘Tis little; but it looks in truth

As if the quiet bones were blest

Among familiar names to rest

And in the places of his youth.

Come then, pure hands, and bear the head

That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,

And come, whatever loves to weep,

And hear the ritual of the dead.

Ah yet, ev’n yet, if this might be,

I, falling on his faithful heart,

Would breathing thro’ his lips impart

The life that almost dies in me;

That dies not, but endures with pain,

And slowly forms the firmer mind,

Treasuring the look it cannot find,

The words that are not heard again.

XXIII

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,

Or breaking into song by fits,

Alone, alone, to where he sits,

The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot,

Who keeps the keys of all the creeds,

I wander, often falling lame,

And looking back to whence I came,

Or on to where the pathway leads;

And crying, How changed from where it ran

Thro’ lands where not a leaf was dumb;

But al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Plates
• Preface
• Introduction
• Contents of Anthology
• 1 Leigh Hunt on his schooldays 1850
• 2 Afred Lord Tennyson from In Memoriam 1850
• 3 Frederick William Faber ‘Half a Heart’ 1856
• 4 William Cory ‘Heraclitus’ 1858
• 5 William Cory ‘Preparation’ 1858
• 6 William Cory ‘Parting’ 1858
• 7 John Addington Symonds ‘What Cannot Be’ 1861
• 8 Algernon Swinburne ‘Hermaphroditus’ 1863
• 9 Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘The Beginning of the End’ 1865
• 10 Digby Mackworth Dolben ‘A Letter’ 1866
• 11 Digby Mackworth Dolben ‘Sonnet’ 1866
• 12 Walter Pater ‘Winckelmann’ 1867
• 13 John Addington Symonds ‘Eudiades’ 1868
• 14 Hon. Roden Neol ‘Ganymede’ 1868
• 15 Simeon Solomon from A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep 1869
• 16 Lord Francis Hervey ‘Son’ 1873
• 17 Edward Carpenter ‘The Peak of Terror’ 1873
• 18 John Addington Symonds ‘Midnight at Baiae’ c. 1875
• 19 Oscar Wilde ‘Wasted Days’ 1877
• 20 Francis William Bourdillon ‘The Legend of the Water Lilies’ 1878
• 21 Gerard Manley Hoplins ‘The Bugler’s First Communion’ 1879
• 22 ’Sigma’ ‘A Love Song’ 1881
• 23 Rennell Rodd ‘If Any One Return’ 1881
• 24 Rennell Rodd ‘Requiescat’ 1881
• 25 John Addington Symonds ‘Stella Maris XLV’ 1881–2
• 26 Edward Cracroft ‘The Flute of Daphnis’ 1883
• 27 Edward Cracroft Lefroy ‘A Palaestral Study’ 1883
• 28 Sir Richard Burton ‘Terminal Essay’ 1885
• 29 Walter Pater from Marius the Epicurean 1885
• 30 Mark André Raffalovich ‘Rose Leaves When the Rose is Dead’ 1886
• 31 Mark André Raffalovich ‘The World Well Lost IV’ 1886
• 32 Mark André Raffalovich ‘The World Well Lost XVIII’ 1886
• 33 Mark André Raffalovich ‘Lovelace’ 1886
• 34 Arthur Christopher Benon on Arthur Hamilton at Cambridge 1886
• 35 Charles Edward Sayle ‘Muscovy’ 1884–8
• 36 Charles Edward Sayle ‘Amor Redux’ 1887
• 37 Sir Henry Hall Caine from The Deemster 1887
• 38 A. G. Renshaw ‘Jealousy’ 1888
• 39 Gerard Manley ‘Epithalamion’ 1888
• 40 Richard C. Jackson ‘Joy Standeth on the Threshold’ C. 1887–9
• 41 Charles Kains-Jackson ‘Sonnet on a Picture by Tuke’ 1889
• 42 Mark André ‘Put on that Languor’ 1889
• 43 Frederick William Rolfe ‘Ballade of Boys Bathing’ 1890
• 44 George Gillett ‘To W.J.M.’ 1890
• 45 S. S. Saale ‘Sonnet’ 1890
• 46 Anonymous Teleny 1890
• 47 Hon. Rosen Neol ‘Comrade, my Comrade’ 1891
• 48 Herbert P. Horne ‘Non Delebo Propter Decem’ 1891
• 49 Charles Kains-Jackson ‘Antinous’ 1891
• 50 George Gillett ‘To Kalon’ 1891
• 51 John Addington Symonds from A Problem in Modern Ethics 1891
• 52 Howard Overing Sturgis Tim 1891
• 53 John Gambril Nicholson ‘Of Boys’ Names’ 1892
• 54 John Gambrill Nicholson ‘Sonnet IV. Held in Bondage’ 1892
• 55 Frederick William Rolse and John Gambril Nicholson ‘St William of Norwich’ 1892
• 56 Lionel Johnson ‘The Destroyer of a Soul’ 1892
• 57 Francis William Bourdillon ‘Si vous croyez que je vais dire’ 1892
• 58 E. Bonney-Steyne ‘Daphnis’ 1892
• 59 Percy Osborn ‘Heartsease and Orchid’ 1892
• 60 ‘Saloninus’ ‘By the Aegean’ 1893
• 61 Theodore Wratislaw ‘To a Sicilian Boy’ 1893
• 62 James Morgan Brown ‘We Have Forgot’ 1893
• 63 Eric, Count Stenbock ‘Many are Dreams… 1893’
• 64 John Gambril Nicholson ‘I Love him Wisely’ 1892–4
• 65 John Gambril Nicholson ‘Ah, would that I in Dreamland’ 1892–4
• 66 John Gambril Nicholson ‘You Wonder Why’ 1892–4
• 67 Walter Pater ‘The Age of Athletic Prizemen’ 1894
• 68 Charles Kains-Jackson ‘The New Chivalry’ 1894
• 69 Eric, Count ‘Narcissus’ 1894
• 70 Edward Carpenter Homogenic Love 1894
• 71 Alan Stanley ‘August Blue’ 1894
• 72 Betram Lawrence ‘A Summer Hour’ 1894
• 73 John Francis Bloxam ‘The Priest and the Acolyte’ 1894
• 74 Lord Alfred Douglas ‘Two Loves’ 1894
• 75 Lord Alfred Douglas ‘In Praise of Shame’ 1894
• 76 Oscar Wilde The Portrait of Mr. W.H. 1889–95
• 77 Lord Alfred Douglas ‘Rondeau’ 1895
• 78 Mark André Raffalovich ‘Tulip of the Twilight’ 1895
• 79 Frederick William Rolfe from ‘Stories Toto Told Me: About Beata Beatrice and the Mama of San Pietro’ 1896
• 80 Percy Addleshaw ‘All Souls’ Night’ 1896
• 81 A. E. Housman ‘Look Not in my Eyes’ 1896
• 82 A. E. Housman ‘If Truth in Hearts that Perish’ 1896
• 83 A. E. Housman ‘Shot? so Quick, so Clean an Ending?’ 1896
• 84 George Ives ‘With Whom, then, should I Sleep?’ 1896
• 85 John Le Gay Brereton ‘Rouge et Noir’ 1896
• 86 Aleister Crowley ‘Dédicace’ 1898
• 87 Aleister Crowley ‘Go into the Highways’ 1898
• 88 E. A. W. Clarke from Jaspar Tristram 1899
• 89 Horatio Brown ‘Bored’ 1900
• Index