Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2
by Havelock Ellis · English · Gutenberg #13611 · 1,048,099 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2
Author: Havelock Ellis
Release date: October 8, 2004 [eBook #13611]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13611
Credits: Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME 2 ***
STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX, VOLUME II
Sexual Inversion
by
HAVELOCK ELLIS
1927
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
It has been remarked by Professor Wilhelm Ostwald that the problem of
homosexuality is a problem left over to us by the Middle Ages, which for
five hundred years dealt with inverts as it dealt with heretics and
witches. To regard the matter thus is to emphasize its social and
humanitarian interest rather than its biological and psychological
significance. It is no doubt this human interest of the question of
inversion, rather than its scientific importance, great as the latter is,
which is mainly responsible for the remarkable activity with which the
study of homosexuality has been carried on during recent years.
The result has been that, during the fourteen years that have passed since
the last edition of this _Study_ was issued, so vast an amount of work has
been carried on in this field that the preparation of a new edition of the
book has been a long and serious task. Nearly every page has been
rewritten or enlarged and the Index of Authors consulted has more than
doubled in length. The original portions of the book have been still more
changed; sixteen new Histories have been added, selected from others in my
possession as being varied, typical, and full.
These extensive additions to the volume have rendered necessary various
omissions. Many of the shorter and less instructive Histories contained in
earlier editions have been omitted, as well as three Appendices which no
longer seem of sufficient interest to retain. In order to avoid undue
increase in the size of this volume, already much larger than in the
previous editions, a new Study of Eonism, or sexo-esthetic inversion, will
be inserted in vol. v, where it will perhaps be at least as much in place
as here.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
It was not my intention to publish a study of an abnormal manifestation of
the sexual instinct before discussing its normal manifestations. It has
happened, however, that this part of my work is ready first, and, since I
thus gain a longer period to develop the central part of my subject, I do
not regret the change of plan.
I had not at first proposed to devote a whole volume to sexual inversion.
It may even be that I was inclined to slur it over as an unpleasant
subject, and one that it was not wise to enlarge on. But I found in time
that several persons for whom I felt respect and admiration were the
congenital subjects of this abnormality. At the same time I realized that
in England, more than in any other country, the law and public opinion
combine to place a heavy penal burden and a severe social stigma on the
manifestations of an instinct which to those persons who possess it
frequently appears natural and normal. It was clear, therefore, that the
matter was in special need of elucidation and discussion.
There can be no doubt that a peculiar amount of ignorance exists regarding
the subject of sexual inversion. I know medical men of many years' general
experience who have never, to their knowledge, come across a single case.
We may remember, indeed, that some fifteen years ago the total number of
cases recorded in scientific literature scarcely equaled those of British
race which I have obtained, and that before my first cases were published
not a single British case, unconnected with the asylum or the prison, had
ever been recorded. Probably not a very large number of people are even
aware that the turning in of the sexual instinct toward persons of the
same sex can ever be regarded as inborn, so far as any sexual instinct is
inborn. And very few, indeed, would not be surprised if it were possible
to publish a list of the names of sexually inverted men and women who at
the present time are honorably known in church, state, society, art, or
letters. It could not be positively affirmed of all such persons that they
were born inverted, but in most the inverted tendency seems to be
instinctive, and appears at a somewhat early age. In any case, however, it
must be realized that in this volume we are not dealing with subjects
belonging to the lunatic asylum, or the prison. We are concerned with
individuals who live in freedom, some of them suffering intensely from
their abnormal organization, but otherwise ordinary members of society. In
a few cases we are concerned with individuals whose moral or artistic
ideals have widely influenced their fellows, who know nothing of the
peculiar organization which has largely molded those ideals.
I am indebted to several friends for notes, observations, and
correspondence on this subject, more especially to one, referred to as
"Z.," and to another as "Q.," who have obtained a considerable number of
reliable histories for me, and have also supplied many valuable notes; to
"Josiah Flynt" (whose articles on tramps in _Atlantic Monthly_ and
_Harper's Magazine_ have attracted wide attention) for an appendix on
homosexuality among tramps; to Drs. Kiernan, Lydston, and Talbot for
assistance at various points noted in the text; and to Dr. K., an American
woman physician, who kindly assisted me in obtaining cases, and has also
supplied an appendix. Other obligations are mentioned in the text.
All those portions of the book which are of medical or medico-legal
interest, including most of the cases, have appeared during the last three
years in the _Alienist and Neurologist_, the _Journal of Mental Science_,
the _Centralblatt für Nervenheilkunde_, the _Medico-legal Journal_, and
the _Archivo delle Psicopatie Sessuale_. The cases, as they appear in the
present volume, have been slightly condensed, but nothing of genuine
psychological interest has been omitted. Owing to some delay in the
publication of the English edition of the work, a German translation by my
friend, Dr. Hans Kurella, editor of the _Centralblatt für
Nervenheilkunde_, has already appeared (1896) in the _Bibliothek für
Sozialwissenschaft_. The German edition contains some matter which has
finally been rejected from the English edition as of minor importance; on
the other hand, much has been added to the English edition, and the whole
carefully revised.
I have only to add that if it may seem that I have unduly ignored the
cases and arguments brought forward by other writers, it is by no means
because I wish to depreciate the valuable work done by my predecessors in
this field. It is solely because I have not desired to popularize the
results previously reached, but simply to bring forward my own results. If
I had not been able to present new facts in what is perhaps a new light, I
should not feel justified in approaching the subject of sexual inversion
at all.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
CONTENTS
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.
CHAPTER II.
THE STUDY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
Westphal--Hössli--Casper--Ulrichs--Krafft-Ebing--Moll--Féré--Kiernan--
Lydston--Raffalovich--Edward Carpenter--Hirschfeld.
CHAPTER III.
SEXUAL INVERSION IN MEN.
Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life--The
Freudian View--Homosexuality in Schools--The Question of Acquired
Homosexuality--Latent Inversion--Retarded Inversion--Bisexuality--The
Question of the Invert's Truthfulness--Histories.
CHAPTER IV.
SEXUAL INVERSION IN WOMEN.
Prevalence of Sexual Inversion Among Women--Among Women of
Ability--Among the Lower Races--Temporary Homosexuality in Schools,
etc.--Histories--Physical and Psychic Characteristics of Inverted
Women--The Modern Development of Homosexuality Among Women.
CHAPTER V.
THE NATURE OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
Analysis of Histories--Race--Heredity--General Health--First Appearance of
Homosexual Impulse--Sexual Precocity and Hyperesthesia--Suggestion and
Other Exciting Causes of Inversion--Masturbation--Attitude Toward
Women--Erotic Dreams--Methods of Sexual Relationship--Pseudo-sexual
Attraction--Physical Sexual Abnormalities--Artistic and Other
Aptitudes--Moral Attitude of the Invert.
CHAPTER VI.
THE THEORY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
What is Sexual Inversion?--Causes of Diverging Views--The Theory of
Suggestion Unworkable--Importance of the Congenital Element in
Inversion--The Freudian Theory--Embryonic Hermaphroditism as a Key to
Inversion--Inversion as a Variation or "Sport"--Comparison with
Color-blindness, Color-hearing, and Similar Abnormalities--What is an
Abnormality?--Not Necessarily a Disease--Relation of Inversion to
Degeneration--Exciting Causes of Inversion--Not Operative in the Absence
of Predisposition.
CHAPTER VII.
CONCLUSIONS.
The Prevention of Homosexuality--The Influence of the
School--Coeducation--The Treatment of Sexual
Inversion--Castration--Hypnotism--Associational
Therapy--Psycho-analysis--Mental and Physical Hygiene--Marriage--The
Children of Inverts--The Attitude of Society--The Horror Aroused by
Homosexuality--Justinian--The _Code Napoléon_--The State of the Law in
Europe Today--Germany--England--What Should be our Attitude Toward
Homosexuality?
APPENDIX A.
Homosexuality Among Tramps.
APPENDIX B.
The School-friendships of Girls.
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
INDEX OF SUBJECTS.
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 Coelius 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[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.
CHAPTER II.
THE STUDY OF SEXUAL INVERSION.
Westphal--Hössli--Casper--Ulrichs--Krafft-Ebing--Moll--Féré--Kiernan--
Lydston--Raffalovich--Edward Carpenter--Hirschfeld.
Westphal, an eminent professor of psychiatry at Berlin, may be said to be
the first to put the study of sexual inversion on an assured scientific
basis. In 1870 he published, in the _Archiv für Psychiatrie_, of which he
was for many years editor, the detailed history of a young woman who, from
her earliest years, differed from other girls: she liked to dress as a
boy, only cared for boys' games, and as she grew up was sexually attracted
only to women, with whom she formed a series of tender relationships, in
which the friends obtained sexual gratification by mutual caresses; while
she blushed and was shy in the presence of women, more especially the girl
with whom she chanced to be in love, she was always absolutely indifferent
in the presence of men. Westphal--a pupil, it may be noted, of Griesinger,
who had already called attention to the high character sometimes shown by
subjects of this perversion--combined keen scientific insight with a rare
degree of personal sympathy for those who came under his care, and it was
this combination of qualities which enabled him to grasp the true nature
of a case such as this, which by most medical men at that time would have
been hastily dismissed as a vulgar instance of vice or insanity. Westphal
perceived that this abnormality was congenital, not acquired, so that it
could not be termed vice; and, while he insisted on the presence of
neurotic elements, his observations showed the absence of anything that
could legitimately be termed insanity. He gave to this condition the name
of "contrary sexual feeling" (_Konträre Sexualempfindung_), by which it
was long usually known in Germany. The way was thus made clear for the
rapid progress of our knowledge of this abnormality. New cases were
published in quick succession, at first exclusively in Germany, and more
especially in Westphal's _Archiv_, but soon in other countries also,
chiefly Italy and France.[113]
While Westphal was the first to place the study of sexual inversion on a
progressive footing, many persons had previously obtained glimpses into
the subject. Thus, in 1791, two cases were published[114] of men who
showed a typical emotional attraction to their own sex, though it was not
quite clearly made out that the inversion was congenital. In 1836, again,
a Swiss writer, Heinrich Hössli, published a rather diffuse but remarkable
work, entitled _Eros_, which contained much material of a literary
character bearing on this matter. He seems to have been moved to write
this book by a trial which had excited considerable attention at that
time. A man of good position had suddenly murdered a youth, and was
executed for the crime, which, according to Hössli, was due to homosexual
love and jealousy. Hössli was not a trained scholar; he was in business at
Glarus as a skillful milliner, the most successful in the town. His own
temperament is supposed to have been bisexual. His book was prohibited by
the local authorities and at a later period the entire remaining stock was
destroyed in a fire, so that its circulation was very small. It is now,
however, regarded by some as the first serious attempt to deal with the
problem of homosexuality since Plato's _Banquet_.[115]
Some years later, in 1852, Casper, the chief medico-legal authority of his
time in Germany,--for it is in Germany that the foundations of the study
of sexual inversion have been laid,--pointed out in Casper's
_Vierteljahrsschrift_ that pederasty, in a broad sense of the word, was
sometimes a kind of "moral hermaphroditism," due to a congenital psychic
condition, and also that it by no means necessarily involved sodomy
(_immissio penis in anum_). Casper brought forward a considerable amount
of valuable evidence concerning these cardinal points, which he was the
first to note,[116] but he failed to realize the full significance of his
observations, and they had no immediate influence, though Tardieu, in
1858, admitted a congenital element in some pederasts.
The man, however, who more than anyone else brought to light the phenomena
of sexual inversion had not been concerned either with the medical or the
criminal aspects of the matter. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (born in 1825 near
Aurich), who for many years expounded and defended homosexual love, and
whose views are said to have had some influence in drawing Westphal's
attention to the matter, was a Hanoverian legal official (_Amtsassessor_),
himself sexually inverted. From 1864 onward, at first under the name of
"Numa Numantius" and subsequently under his own name, Ulrichs published,
in various parts of Germany, a long series of works dealing with this
question, and made various attempts to obtain a revision of the legal
position of the sexual invert in Germany.
Although not a writer whose psychological views can carry much scientific
weight, Ulrichs appears to have been a man of most brilliant ability, and
his knowledge is said to have been of almost universal extent; he was not
only well versed in his own special subjects of jurisprudence and
theology, but in many branches of natural science, as well as in
archeology; he was also regarded by many as the best Latinist of his time.
In 1880 he left Germany and settled in Naples, and afterward at Aquila in
the Abruzzi, whence he issued a Latin periodical. He died in 1895.[117]
John Addington Symonds, who went to Aquila in 1891, wrote: "Ulrichs is
_chrysostomos_ to the last degree, sweet, noble, a true gentleman and man
of genius. He must have been at one time a man of singular personal
distinction, so finely cut are his features, and so grand the lines of his
skull."[118]
For many years Ulrichs was alone in his efforts to gain scientific
recognition for congenital homosexuality. He devised (with allusion to
Uranos in Plato's _Symposium_) the word uranian or urning, ever since
frequently used for the homosexual lover, while he called the normal
heterosexual lover a dioning (from Dione). He regarded uranism, or
homosexual love, as a congenital abnormality by which a female soul had
become united with a male body--_anima muliebris in corpore virili
inclusa_--and his theoretical speculations have formed the starting point
for many similar speculations. His writings are remarkable in various
respects, although, on account of the polemical warmth with which, as one
pleading _pro domo_, he argued his cause, they had no marked influence on
scientific thought.[119]
This privilege was reserved for Westphal. After he had shown the way and
thrown open his journal for their publication, new cases appeared in rapid
succession. In Italy, also, Ritti, Tamassia, Lombroso, and others began to
study these phenomena. In 1882 Charcot and Magnan published in the
_Archives de Neurologie_ the first important study which appeared in
France concerning sexual inversion and allied sexual perversions. They
regarded sexual inversion as an episode (_syndrome_) in a more fundamental
process of hereditary degeneration, and compared it with such morbid
obsessions as dipsomania and kleptomania. From a somewhat more
medico-legal standpoint, the study of sexual inversion in France was
furthered by Brouardel, and still more by Lacassagne, whose stimulating
influence at Lyons has produced fruitful results in the work of many
pupils.[120]
Of much more importance in the history of the theory of sexual inversion
was the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (born at Mannheim in 1840 and
died at Graz in 1902), for many years professor of psychiatry at Vienna
University and one of the most distinguished alienists of his time. While
active in all departments of psychiatry and author of a famous textbook,
from 1877 onward he took special interest in the pathology of the sexual
impulse. His _Psychopathia Sexualis_ contained over two hundred histories,
not only of sexual inversion but of all other forms of sexual perversion.
For many years it was the only book on the subject and it long remained
the chief storehouse of facts. It passed through many editions and was
translated into many languages (there are two translations in English),
enjoying an immense and not altogether enviable vogue.
Krafft-Ebing's methods were open to some objection. His mind was not of a
severely critical order. He poured out the new and ever-enlarged editions
of his book with extraordinary rapidity, sometimes remodelling them. He
introduced new subdivisions from time to time into his classification of
sexual perversions, and, although this rather fine-spun classification has
doubtless contributed to give precision to the subject and to advance its
scientific study, it was at no time generally accepted. Krafft-Ebing's
great service lay in the clinical enthusiasm with which he approached the
study of sexual perversions. With the firm conviction that he was
conquering a great neglected field of morbid psychology which rightly
belongs to the physician, he accumulated without any false shame a vast
mass of detailed histories, and his reputation induced sexually abnormal
individuals in all directions to send him their autobiographies, in the
desire to benefit their fellow-sufferers.
It is as a clinician, rather than as a psychologist, that we must regard
Krafft-Ebing. At the outset he considered inversion to be a functional
sign of degeneration, a partial manifestation of a neuropathic and
psychopathic state which is in most cases hereditary. This perverse
sexuality appears spontaneously with the developing sexual life, without
external causes, as the individual manifestation of an abnormal
modification of the _vita sexualis_, and must then be regarded as
congenital; or it develops as a result of special injurious influences
working on a sexuality which had at first been normal, and must then be
regarded as acquired. Careful investigation of these so-called acquired
cases, however, Krafft-Ebing in the end finally believed, would indicate
that the predisposition consists in a latent homosexuality, or at least
bisexuality, which requires for its manifestation the operation of
accidental causes. In the last edition of his work Krafft-Ebing was
inclined to regard inversion as being not so much a degeneration as a
variation, a simple anomaly, and acknowledged that his opinion thus
approximated to that which had long been held by inverts themselves.[121]
At the time of his death, Krafft-Ebing, who had begun by accepting the
view, at that time prevalent among alienists, that homosexuality is a sign
of degeneration, thus fully adopted and set the seal of his authority on
the view, already expressed alike by some scientific investigators as well
as by inverts themselves, that sexual inversion is to be regarded simply
as an anomaly, whatever difference of opinion there might be as to the
value of the anomaly. The way was even opened for such a view as that of
Freud and most of the psychoanalysts today who regard a strain of
homosexuality as normal and almost constant, with a profound significance
for the psychonervous life. In 1891 Dr. Albert Moll, of Berlin, published
his work, _Die Konträre Sexualempfindung_, which subsequently appeared in
much enlarged and revised editions. It speedily superseded all previous
books as a complete statement and judicious discussion of sexual
inversion. Moll was not content merely to present fresh clinical material.
He attacked the problem which had now become of primary importance: the
nature and causes of sexual inversion. He discussed the phenomena as a
psychologist even more than as a physician, bearing in mind the broader
aspects of the problem, keenly critical of accepted opinions, but
judiciously cautious in the statement of conclusions. He cleared away
various ancient prejudices and superstitions which even Krafft-Ebing
sometimes incautiously repeated. He accepted the generally received
doctrine that the sexually inverted usually belong to families in which
various nervous and mental disorders prevail, but he pointed out at the
same time that it is not in all cases possible to prove that we are
concerned with individuals possessing a hereditary neurotic taint. He also
rejected any minute classification of sexual inverts, only recognizing
psycho-sexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality. At the same time he cast
doubt on the existence of acquired homosexuality, in a strict sense,
except in occasional cases, and he pointed out that even when a normal
heterosexual impulse appears at puberty, and a homosexual impulse later,
it may still be the former that was acquired and the latter that was
inborn.
In America attention had been given to the phenomena at a fairly early
period. Mention may be specially made of J.G. Kiernan and G. Frank
Lydston, both of whom put forward convenient classifications of homosexual
manifestations some thirty years ago.[122] More recently (1911) an
American writer, under the pseudonym of Xavier Mayne, privately printed an
extensive work entitled _The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as
a Problem in Social Life_, popularly written and compiled from many
sources. This book, from a subjective and scarcely scientific standpoint,
claims that homosexual relationships are natural, necessary, and
legitimate.[123]
In England the first attempts to deal seriously, from the modern point of
view, with the problem of homosexuality came late, and were either
published privately or abroad. In 1883 John Addington Symonds privately
printed his discussion of _paiderastia_ in ancient Greece, under the title
of _A Problem in Greek Ethics_, and in 1889-1890 he further wrote, and in
1891 privately printed, _A Problem of Modern Ethics: Being an Enquiry into
the Phenomena of Sexual Inversion_. In 1886 Sir Richard Burton added to
his translation of the _Arabian Nights_ a Terminal Essay on the same
subject. In 1894 Edward Carpenter privately printed in Manchester a
pamphlet entitled _Homogenic Love_, in which he criticised various
psychiatric views of inversion at that time current, and claimed that the
laws of homosexual love are the same as those of heterosexual love,
urging, however, that the former possesses a special aptitude to be
exalted to a higher and more spiritual level of comradeship, so fulfilling
a beneficent social function. More recently (1907) Edward Carpenter
published a volume of papers on homosexuality and its problems, under the
title of _The Intermediate Sex_, and later (1914) a more special study of
the invert in early religion and in warfare, _Intermediate Types among
Primitive Folk_.
In 1896 the most comprehensive book so far written on the subject in
England was published in French by Mr. André Raffalovich (in Lacassagne's
_Bibliothèque de Criminologie_), _Uranisme et Unisexualité_. This book
dealt chiefly with congenital inversion, publishing no new cases, but
revealing a wide knowledge of the matter. Raffalovich put forward many
just and sagacious reflections on the nature and treatment of inversion,
and the attitude of society toward perverted sexuality. The historical
portions of the book, which are of special interest, deal largely with the
remarkable prevalence of inversion in England, neglected by previous
investigators. Raffalovich, whose attitude is, on the whole, philosophical
rather than scientific, regards congenital inversion as a large and
inevitable factor in human life, but, taking the Catholic standpoint, he
condemns all sexuality, either heterosexual or homosexual, and urges the
invert to restrain the physical manifestations of his instinct and to aim
at an ideal of chastity. On the whole, it may be said that the book is the
work of a thinker who has reached his own results in his own way, and
those results bear an imprint of originality and freedom from tradition.
In recent years no one has so largely contributed to place our knowledge
of sexual inversion on a broad and accurate basis as Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld
of Berlin, who possesses an unequalled acquaintance with the phenomena of
homosexuality in all their aspects. He has studied the matter exhaustively
in Germany and to some extent in other countries also; he has received the
histories of a thousand inverts; he is said to have met over ten thousand
homosexual persons. As editor of the _Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, which he established in 1899, and author of various
important monographs--more especially on transitional psychic and physical
stages between masculinity and femininity--Hirschfeld had already
contributed greatly to the progress of investigation in this field before
the appearance in 1914 of his great work, _Die Homosexualität des Mannes
und des Weibes_. This is not only the largest but the most precise,
detailed, and comprehensive--even the most condensed--work which has yet
appeared on the subject. It is, indeed, an encyclopedia of homosexuality.
For such a task Hirschfeld had been prepared by many years of strenuous
activity as a physician, an investigator, a medico-legal expert before the
courts, and his position as president of the _Wissenschaftlich-humanitären
Komitee_ which is concerned with the defense of the interests of the
homosexual in Germany. In Hirschfeld's book the pathological conception
of inversion has entirely disappeared; homosexuality is regarded as
primarily a biological phenomenon of universal extension, and secondarily
as a social phenomenon of serious importance. There is no attempt to
invent new theories; the main value of Hirschfeld's work lies, indeed, in
the constant endeavor to keep close to definite facts. It is this quality
which renders the book an indispensable source for all who seek
enlightened and precise information on this question.
Even the existence of such a treatise as this of Hirschfeld's is enough to
show how rapidly the study of this subject has grown. A few years ago--for
instance, when Dr. Paul Moreau wrote his _Aberrations du Sens
Génésique_--sexual inversion was scarcely even a name. It was a loathsome
and nameless vice, only to be touched with a pair of tongs, rapidly and
with precautions. As it now presents itself, it is a psychological and
medico-legal problem so full of interest that we need not fear to face it,
and so full of grave social actuality that we are bound to face it.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] In England aberration of the sexual instinct, or the tendency of men
to feminine occupations and of women to masculine occupations, had been
referred to in the _Medical Times and Gazette_, February 9, 1867; Sir G.
Savage first described a case of "Sexual Perversion" in the _Journal of
Mental Science_, vol. xxx, October, 1884.
[114] Moritz, _Magazin für Erfahrungsseelenkunde_, Berlin, Bd. viii.
[115] A full and interesting account of Hössli and his book is given by
Karsch in the _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. v, 1903, pp.
449-556.
[116] "Eugen Dühren" (Iwan Bloch) remarks, however (_Neue Forschungen über
den Marquis de Sade und seine Zeit_, p. 436), that de Sade in his _Aline
et Valcour_ seems to recognize that inversion is sometimes inborn, or at
least natural, and apt to develop at a very early age, in spite of all
provocations to the normal attitude. "And if this inclination were not
natural," he makes Sarmiento say, "would the impression of it be received
in childhood?... Let us study better this indulgent Nature before daring
to fix her limits." Still earlier, in 1676 (as Schouten has pointed out,
_Sexual-Probleme_, January, 1910, p. 66), an Italian priest called
Carretto recognized that homosexual tendencies are innate.
[117] For some account of Ulrichs see _Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, Bd. i, 1899, p. 36.
[118] Horatio Brown, _John Addington Symonds, a Biography_, vol. ii, p.
344.
[119] Ulrichs scarcely went so far as to assert that both homosexual and
heterosexual love are equally normal and healthy; this has, however, been
argued more recently.
[120] Special mention may be made of _L'Inversion Sexuelle_, a copious and
comprehensive, though sometimes uncritical book by Dr. J. Chevalier,
published in 1893, and the _Perversion et Perversité Sexuelles_ of Dr.
Saint-Paul, writing under the pseudonym of "Dr. Laupts," published in 1896
and republished in an enlarged form, under the title of _L'Homosexualité
et les Types Homosexuels_, in 1910.
[121] Krafft-Ebing set forth his latest views in a paper read before the
International Medical Congress, at Paris, in 1900 (_Comptes-rendus_,
"Section de Psychiatrie," pp. 421, 462; also in contributions to the
_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd. iii, 1901).
[122] Kiernan, _Detroit Lancet_, 1884, _Alienist and Neurologist_, April,
1891; Lydston, _Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter_, September 7,
1889, and _Addresses and Essays_, 1892.
[123] A summary of the conclusion of this book, of which but few copies
were printed, will be found in Hirschfeld's _Vierteljahrsberichte_,
October, 1911, pp. 78-91.
CHAPTER III.
SEXUAL INVERSION IN MEN.
Relatively Undifferentiated State of the Sexual Impulse in Early Life--The
Freudian View--Homosexuality in Schools--The Question of Acquired
Homosexuality--Latent Inversion--Retarded Inversion--Bisexuality--The
Question of the Invert's Truthfulness--Histories.
When the sexual instinct first appears in early youth, it is much less
specialized than normally it becomes later. Not only is it, at the outset,
less definitely directed to a specific sexual end, but even the sex of its
object is sometimes uncertain.[124] This has always been so well
recognized that those in authority over young men have sometimes forced
women upon them to avoid the risk of possible unnatural offenses.[125]
The institution which presents these phenomena to us in the most marked
and the most important manner is, naturally, the school, in England
especially the Public School. In France, where the same phenomena are
noted, Tarde called attention to these relationships, "most usually
Platonic in the primitive meaning of the word, which indicate a simple
indecision of frontier between friendship and love, still undifferentiated
in the dawn of the awakening heart," and he regretted that no one had
studied them. In England we are very familiar with vague allusions to the
vices of public schools. From time to time we read letters in the
newspapers denouncing public schools as "hot-beds of vice" and one
anonymous writer remarks that "some of our public schools almost provoke
the punishment of the cities of the Plain."[126] But these allegations are
rarely or never submitted to accurate investigation. The physicians and
masters of public schools who are in a position to study the matter
usually possess no psychological training, and appear to view
homosexuality with too much disgust to care to pay any careful attention
to it. What knowledge they possess they keep to themselves, for it is
considered to be in the interests of public schools that these things
should be hushed up. When anything very scandalous occurs one or two lads
are expelled, to their own grave and, perhaps, lifelong injury, and
without benefit to those who remain, whose awakening sexual life rarely
receives intelligent sympathy.
In several of the Histories which follow in this chapter, as well
as in Histories contained in other volumes of these _Studies_,
details will be found concerning homosexuality as it occurs in
English schools, public or private. (See also the study
"Auto-erotism" in vol. i.) The prevalence of homosexual and
erotic phenomena in schools varies greatly at different schools
and at different times in the same school, while in small private
schools such phenomena may be entirely unknown. As an English
schoolboy I never myself saw or heard anything of such practices,
and in Germany, Professor Gurlitt (_Die Neue Generation_,
January, 1909), among others, testifies to similar absence of
experience during his whole school life, although there was much
talk and joking among the boys over sexual things. I have added
some observations by a correspondent whose experiences of English
public school life are still recent:--
"In the years I was a member of a public school, I saw and heard
a good deal of homosexuality, though till my last two years I did
not understand its meaning. As a prefect, I discussed with other
prefects the methods of checking it, and of punishing it when
detected. My own observations, supported by those of others, led
me to think that the fault of the usual method of dealing with
homosexuality in schools is that it regards all school
homosexualists as being in one class together, and has only one
way of dealing with them--the birch for a first offense,
expulsion for a second. Now, I think we may distinguish _three_
classes of school homosexualists:--
"(a) A very small number who are probably radically inverted, and
who do not scruple to sacrifice young and innocent boys to their
passions. These, and these only, are a real moral danger to
others, and I believe them to be rare.
"(b) Boys of various ages who, having been initiated into the
passive part in their young days, continue practices of an active
or passive kind; but only with boys already known to be
homosexualists; they draw the line at corrupting fresh victims.
This class realize more or less what they are about, but cannot
be called a danger to the morals of pure boys.
"(c) Young boys who, whether in the development of their own
physical nature, or by the instruction of older boys of the class
(a), find out the pleasures of masturbation or intercrural
connection. (I never heard of a case of _pedicatio_ at my school,
and only once of _fellatio_, which was attempted on a quite young
boy, who complained to his house master, and the offender was
expelled). Boys in this class have probably little or no idea of
what sexual morality means, and can hardly be accused of a
_moral_ offense at all.
"I submit that these three classes should receive quite different
treatment. Expulsion may occasionally be necessary for class (a),
but the few who belong to this class are usually too cunning to
get caught. It used to be notorious at school that it was almost
always the wrong people who got dropped on. I do not think a boy
in the other two classes should ever be expelled, and even when
expulsion is unavoidable, it should, if possible, be deferred
till the end of the term, so as to make it indistinguishable from
an ordinary departure. After all, there is no reason to ruin a
boy's prospects because he is a little beast at sixteen; there
are very few hopeless incorrigibles at that age.
"As regards the other two classes, I should begin by giving boys
very much fuller enlightenment on sexual subjects than is usually
done, before they go to a public school at all. Either a boy is
pitchforked into the place in utter innocence and ignorance, and
yields to temptations to do things which he vaguely, if at all,
realizes are wrong, and that only because a puzzling sort of
instinct tells him so; or else he is given just enough
information to whet his curiosity, usually in the shape of
warnings against certain apparently harmless bodily acts, which
he not unnaturally tries out of curiosity, and finds them very
pleasant. It may be undesirable that a boy should have full
knowledge, at the time he goes to school, but it is more
undesirable that he should go with a burning curiosity, or a
total ignorance on the subject. I am convinced that much might
be done in the way of prevention if boys were told more, and
allowed to be _open_. Much of the pleasure of sexual talk among
boys I believe to be due to the spurious interest aroused by the
fact that it is forbidden fruit, and involves risk if caught. It
seems to me that frankness is far more moral than suggestion. I
would not 'expurgate' school editions of great authors; the frank
obscenity of parts of Shakespeare is far less immoral than the
prurient prudishness which declines to print it, but numbers the
lines in such a way that the boy can go home and look up the
omitted passage in a complete edition, with a distinct sense of
guilt, which is where the harm comes in."
It is probable that only a small proportion of homosexual boys in
schools can properly be described as "vicious." A. Hoche,
describing homosexuality in German schools ("Zür Frage der
forensischen Beurteilung sexuellen Vergehen," _Neurologisches
Centralblatt_, 1896, No. 2), and putting together communications
received from various medical men regarding their own youthful
experiences at school, finds relationships of the kind very
common, usually between boys of different ages and
school-classes. According to one observer, the feminine, or
passive, part was always played by a boy of girlish form and
complexion, and the relationships were somewhat like those of
normal lovers, with kissing, poems, love-letters, scenes of
jealousy, sometimes visits to each other in bed, but without
masturbation, pederasty, or other grossly physical
manifestations. From his own youthful experience Hoche records
precisely similar observations, and remarks that the lovers were
by no means recruited from the vicious elements in the school.
(The elder scholars, of 21 or 22 years of age, formed regular
sexual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) It is
probable that the homosexual relationships in English schools
are, as a rule, not more vicious than those described by Hoche,
but that the concealment in which they are wrapped leads to
exaggeration. In the course of a discussion on this matter over
thirty years ago, "Olim Etoniensis" wrote (_Journal of
Education_, 1882, p. 85) that, on making a list of the vicious
boys he had known at Eton, he found that "these very boys had
become cabinet ministers, statesmen, officers, clergymen,
country-gentlemen, etc., and that they are nearly all of them
fathers of thriving families, respected and prosperous." But, as
Marro has remarked, the question is not thus settled. Public
distinction by no means necessarily implies any fine degree of
private morality.
Sometimes the manifestations thus appearing in schools or
wherever youths are congregated together are not truly
homosexual, but exhibit a more or less brutal or even sadistic
perversion of the immature sexual instinct. This may be
illustrated by the following narrative concerning a large London
city warehouse: "A youth left my class at the age of 16½," writes
a correspondent, "to take up an apprenticeship in a large
wholesale firm in G---- Street. Fortunately he went on probation
of three weeks before articling. He came to me at the end of the
first week asking me to intercede with his mother (he had no
father) not to let him return. He told me that almost nightly,
and especially when new fellows came, the youths in his dormitory
(eleven in number) would waylay him, hold him down, and rub his
parts to the tune of some comic song or dance-music. The boy who
could choose the fastest time had the privilege of performing the
operation, and most had to be the victim in turn unless new boys
entered, when they would sometimes be subjected to this for a
week. This boy, having been brought up strictly, was shocked,
dazed, and alarmed; but they stopped him from calling out, and he
dared not report it. Most boys entered direct on their
apprenticeship without probation, and had no chance to get out. I
procured the boy's release from the place and gave the manager to
understand what went on." In such a case as this it has usually
happened that a strong boy of brutal and perverse instincts and
some force of character initiates proceedings which the others
either fall into with complacency or are too weak to resist.
Max Dessoir[127] came to the conclusion that "an undifferentiated sexual
feeling is normal, on the average, during the first years of
puberty,--i.e., from 13 to 15 in boys and from 12 to 14 in girls,--while
in later years it must be regarded as pathological." He added very truly
that in this early period the sexual emotion has not become centered in
the sexual organs. This latter fact is certainly far too often forgotten
by grown-up persons who suspect the idealized passion of boys and girls of
a physical side which children have often no suspicion of, and would view
with repulsion and horror. How far the sexual instinct may be said to be
undifferentiated in early puberty as regards sex is a little doubtful. It
is comparatively undifferentiated, but except in rare cases it is not
absolutely undifferentiated.
We have to admit, however, that, in the opinion of the latest
physiologists of sex, such as Castle, Heape, and Marshall, each se
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/13611