"I think I may say that I have the esthetic and moral sense very strongly ingrained. Indeed, they are largely synonymous with me. I have no dramatic aptitude, and, though I flatter myself that my taste is good in music, I have no knowledge of music. If I have a favorite color, it is a dark crimson or blue, of the nature of old stained glass. I derive great pleasure from all literary and pictorial art and architecture; indeed, art of all kinds. I have facility in writing personal lyrical verse; it affords me relief.
"I think my inversion must be congenital, as the desire of contact with those boys I loved began before masturbation and has lasted through private and public resorts and into university life. The other sex does not attract me, but I am very fond of children, girls as well as boys. (If there is sexuality in this, which I trust there is not, it is latent)."
This statement is of interest because it may well lead us to suppose that the writer, who is of balanced mind and sound judgment, possesses a confirmed homosexual outlook on life. While, however, it is the rule for the permanent direction of the sexual impulse to be decided by the age of 20, that age is too early to permit us to speak positively, especially in a youth whose adolescent undifferentiated or homosexual impulses are fostered by university life. This proved to be! the case with T. D., who, though doubtless possessing a psychically anomalous strain, is yet predominantly masculine. On leaving the university his heterosexuality asserted itself normally. About six years after the earlier statement, he wrote that he had fallen in love. "I am on the eve of marrying a girl of nearly my own age. She has sympathy as well as knowledge in my fields of study; it was thus easier for me to explain my past, and I found that she could not understand the moral objections to homosexual practices. My own opinion always was that the moral objections were very considerable, but might in some cases be overcome. In any case I have entirely lost my sexual attraction toward boys; though I am glad to say that the appreciation of their charm and grace remains. My instincts, therefore, have undergone a considerable change, but the change is not entirely in the direction of normality. The instinct for sodomy in the proper sense of the word used to be unintelligible to me; since the object of attraction has become a woman this instinct is mixed with the normal in my desire. Further, an element which much troubled me, as being most foreign to my ideal feelings, has not quite left me—the indecent and often scatologic curiosity about immature girls. I can only hope that the realization of the normal in marriage may finally kill these painful aberrations. I should add that the practice of masturbation has been abandoned."
HISTORY XII.—Aged 24. Father and mother both living; the latter is of a better social standing than the father. He is much attached to his mother, and she gives him some sympathy. He has a brother who is normally attracted to women. He himself has never been attracted to women, and takes no interest in them nor in their society.
At the age of 4 he first became conscious of an attraction for older males. From the ages of 11 and 19, at a large grammar-school, he had relationships with about one hundred boys. Needless to add, he considers homosexuality extremely common in schools. It was, however, the Oscar Wilde case which first opened his eyes to the wide prevalence of homosexuality, and he considers that the publicity of that case has done much, if not to increase homosexuality, at all events to make it more conspicuous and outspoken.
He is now attracted to youths about 5 or 6 years younger than himself; they must be good-looking. He has never perverted a boy not already inclined to homosexuality. In his relationship he does not feel exclusively like a male or a female: sometimes one, sometimes the other. He is often liked, he says, because of his masculine character.
He is fully developed and healthy, well over middle height, inclined to be plump, with full face and small moustache. He smokes many cigarettes and cannot get on without them. Though his manners are very slightly if at all feminine, he acknowledges many feminine ways. He is fond of jewelry, until lately always wore a bangle, and likes women's rings; he is very particular about fine ties, and uses very delicate women's handkerchiefs. He has always had a taste for music, and sings. He has a special predilection for green; it is the predominant color in the decoration of his room, and everything green appeals to him. He finds that the love of green (and also of violet and purple) is very widespread among his inverted friends.
HISTORY XIII.—Artist, aged 34. "The earliest sex impression that I am conscious of," he writes, "is at the age of 9 or 10 falling in love with a handsome boy who must have been about two years my senior. I do not recollect ever having spoken to him, but my desire, so far as I can recall, was that he should seize hold of and handle me. I have a distinct impression yet of how pleasurable even physical pain or cruelty would have been at his hands. (I have noticed that in young children it is often difficult to differentiate the sexual emotions from what in the grown up would be definite cruelty.)
"It must have been at about this time that I discovered—entirely by myself—the act of masturbation. The process grew up quite naturally, though I cannot but think that the cooped-up life in a London street and a London school, with want of physical exercise, as well as want of landscape, color, and beautiful form, had much to do with it. The tone of the school I was at was singularly clean, but I question whether the vaunted cleanliness of tone of day-schools can compensate for the open life and large discipline of an English public school.
"How far the rather frequent masturbation between the ages of 10 and 13 may have had to do with weakly health I do not know, but when I was 12 I was taken by my mother to a famous doctor. He made no inquiries of a sexual nature, but he advised that I should be sent away from London. He had a sentimental horror of violent games, etc., for boys, and put aside various suggested public schools. Finally I was sent to a private school at the seaside.