White - Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality

Nineteenth-century Writings on Homosexuality collects together texts concerned with same-sex desire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This comprehensive sourcebook ranges widely, both generically and chronologically, and includes prose, poetry, fiction, history and polemic from 1810 to 1914. Containing a general introduction, section headnotes, extensive information on the genesis and publication of the texts, a bibliography of primary and secondary source material, and sections on the Law, Science, Love, and Sex, this book provides a unique picture of the diversity and daring of writing about same-sex desire at a time when all such acts were illegal. Nineteenth-century Writings on Homosexuality includes writing on

• trials and scandals
• censorship and homophobia
• personal and cultural histories
• love and friendship
• lesbianism
• aestheticism and decadence
• sexual tourism and colonialism
• cross-class desire
• sodomy and sadomasochism

Bringing together for the first time in one volume a wide range of primary source material, this fascinating book includes many texts out of print since the last century, and unavailable outside specialised academic libraries.

Chris White is lecturer in Literature at Bolton Institute. She is the co-editor with Elaine Hobby of What Lesbians Do in Books, and has published a number of essays on nineteenth-century homosexuality and lesbianism.

EDITED BY CHRIS WHITE

First published 1999
by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

editorial material 1999 Chris White

The right of Chris White to be identified as the Editor of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Nineteenth-century writings on homosexuality: a sourcebook [compiled by] Chris White.

p. cm.

1. HomosexualityGreat BritainLiterary collections.

2. HomosexualityGreat BritainHistory19th centurySources.

3. LesbiansGreat BritainHistory19th centurySources.

4. Gay menGreat BritainHistory19th centurySources.

5. LesbiansGreat BritainLiterary collections.

6. Gay menGreat BritainLiterary collections.

7. English Literature19th century.

8. Gay mens writings, English.

9. Lesbians writings, English.

10. Gays writings, English.

I. White, Chris, 1963-.

PR1111.H57L681 99998-45703

820.80353dc21CIP

ISBN 0-415-15305-0 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-15306-9 (pbk)

ISBN 0-203-00240-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-21658-X (Glassbook Format)

CONTENTS

I have incurred a large number of debts in the course of this research. The work could not have been completed without the assistance and expertise of the staff of Bolton Local Studies and Archives Department; the British Library, in particular the staff of the Rare Books Room; Cambridge University Library; John Rylands Library in Manchester; New York Public Library; the Hallward and Law Libraries of Nottingham University; and Sheffield City Archives.

I am very grateful to the Bolton Institute of Higher Education for providing the sabbatical which allowed this work to be completed nearly on time, and to my students at Bolton for asking difficult questions about some of the material included here.

This work has benefited from the scrutiny and criticism of many individuals, including Joseph Bristow, Angela Leighton, Suzanne Raitt, Tim Youngs and especially Simon Shepherd, to whom I owe and give particular thanks.

To three people I would like to acknowledge very large debts indeed: Bill Overton, for the time and trouble he has taken in tracking down and translating obscure Latin references and other recherch matters; Norman Vaughton, for being there; and Elaine Hobby for her loving patience, tireless support, practical assistance and stubbornness. Thank you. The errors are, of course, all mine own.

The laws of God, the laws of man,

He may keep that will and can;

Not I: let God and man decree

Laws for themselves and not for me;

And if my ways are not as theirs

Let them mind their own affairs.

Their deeds I judge and much condemn,

Yet when did I make laws for them?

Please yourselves, say I, and they

Need only look the other way.

But no, they will not;they must still

Wrest their neighbour to their will,

And make me dance as they desire

With jail and gallows and hell-fire.

And how am I to face the odds

Of mans bedevilment and Gods?

I, a stranger and afraid

In a world I never made.

They will be master, right or wrong;

Though both are foolish, both are strong.

And since, my soul, we cannot fly

To Saturn or to Mercury,

Keep we must, if keep we can,

These foreign laws of God and man.

The keynote of nineteenth-century homosexuality is struck by Oscar Wilde in the witness box in 1895 speaking at length of the love that dare not speak its name.increasingly, through the course of the century, under sustained and varied assault by those who are only too keen to speak and name their love. This speaking and naming occurs in code, in private, under guise of scientific truth written for experts and specialists, but also breaks out into the public domains of high art, historical certainty, social hygiene and responsibility to the empire.

Much effort and energy is put by those in power into controlling and punishing any outbreak of what is seen simultaneously as disease and evil. The homosexual is classified and determined by every available model of understanding: legal, religious, medical, moral. He poses the greatest threat to the stability and progress of society. His sexual non-productiveness is collapsed into social and industrial non-productiveness. He is extraneous and a source of a deadly contagion to the majority. The body of the homosexual is seen as a reflection of his soul, or vice versa. Both mind and body are lax, puffy, decayed and morbid through self-indulgence and affinity to things of the street and the animal kingdom, made effeminate and languid by too long an association with all things French. Such men were not wanted in England.

An empire such as ours requires as its first condition an Imperial Racea race vigorous and industrious and intrepid. Health of mind and body exalt a nation in the completion of the universe. The survival of the fittest is an absolute truth in the conditions of the modern world.

This book documents the responses of homosexuals themselves to the understandings and treatments to which they were subject.

By tracking the terminology employed to label same-sex sexual acts between 1822 and 1885, the shifting conceptualizations of the acts and the identities associated with those acts become apparent. Prior to 1869 the terms available to name sexual acts or sexual relationships between persons of the same sex were circumlocutory avoidances of naming the beast, mere insults or those names which borrowed from the certainties of Old Testament wrath. Thus, a criminal charge was often framed as an unnatural offence, and reported as disgusting depravity (see Candler and Doughty, p. 32 below), or monstrous feats (see R v.Nicoll, p. 40 below). These men were invariably wretches, intent on committing filthy acts through filthy lusts, to the detriment of social order, family happiness and racial health. In the ringing phrase of Robert Holloway, writing about the Vere Street brothel (see p. 9 below), these men were the sweepings of Sodom [and] the spawn of Gomorrah, so detestable a race that a