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:—