LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Past Out: Who Was John Addington Symonds? |
by Wik Wikholm |
John Addington Symonds was such a defender of "sexual aberrations" that Algernon Swinburne, a respected English intellectual, nicknamed the famous writer "Soddington Symonds" in a twist on the word sodomy. Yet Symonds, who co-authored the first English book about homosexuality, was wracked with guilt about his own sexual tastes. In 1840, Symonds was born in Clifton, England, to wealthy physician Dr. John Symonds, a pious man who taught his son to adhere to strict Puritan morality. When Symonds was 13, his father enrolled him at Harrow, a prestigious English boarding school, and the boy experienced a crisis. "It was the moral state of the school," he wrote in his memoirs. "Here and there one could not avoid seeing acts of onanism, mutual masturbation, the sport of naked boys in bed together. They filled me with disgust and loathing." Even worse, Symonds learned that Charles Vaughan, Harrow's headmaster, had a sexual relationship with a pupil. Symonds' moralism put him in a tough spot. He was sexually attracted to other boys and even became romantically involved with a choirboy, Willie Dyer, but his moral restraint kept the relationship chaste. Symonds' romance with Willie continued even after he graduated from Harrow and matriculated at Oxford, where he became enthralled with the classics. Ancient Greek literature especially interested Symonds because Greek pederasty seemed to validate his feelings for Willie. Symonds, who aspired to a literary career, wrote many poems about the "love of the Ancients." When discussing his poetry with another student, he told his friend about Vaughan's relationship with his pupil. His friend convinced Symonds to tell his father. When he did, Dr. Symonds wrote Vaughan, threatening to ruin him. Vaughan resigned, and never re-entered public life. At the height of the Vaughan affair, Symonds confessed his feelings for Willie to his father. Dr. Symonds told him to end the relationship. Symonds complied, fearing for his career. Hoping to overcome his sexual desires, Symonds married Catherine North in 1864, but his plan failed. After four years of marriage, Symonds, now teaching literature, fell in love with a 19-year-old student. The relationship did not last, but his first experience of male-male sex so far surpassed anything he had ever experienced with Catherine that he asked her to forego sex. Catherine was hurt, but she agreed. Symonds' academic career ended abruptly in 1871. His physician told him that a nagging cough was caused by an advanced case of tuberculosis and recommended the standard treatment: clear mountain air. Symonds moved his family to Davos, a Swiss village where he began writing what amounted to more than 35 volumes on history and literature. The work he most enjoyed was not his critically acclaimed seven-volume study of the Italian Renaissance, but poetry one biographer has called "execrable." Awful or not, the poems Symonds wrote gave him a forum in which he celebrated male-male sex and tried to justify his own sexual inclinations. When Symonds' health permitted, he traveled to Venice, his favorite city. There he met Angelo Fusato, a handsome gondolier, and hired him as a servant. The two developed a sexual relationship that lasted the rest of Symonds' life. The relationship fulfilled Symonds' dream of a romance with a man, but he still struggled with Puritan guilt. He read everything he could find about what he called his "abnormality," especially medical literature and the work of German scholar Karl Ulrichs. Both Ulrichs and the doctors wrote that this "abnormality" was a result of inborn effeminacy. Symonds also found solace in Walt Whitman's poetry. He liked Whitman's portraits of manly comradeship better than the effeminacy Ulrichs and the doctors wrote about. Beginning in 1871, Symonds exchanged many letters with the American poet, but he only hinted at his true interest in Whitman's work. In 1890, he finally asked Whitman if the love of comrades entailed "physical intimacies." On August 19, 1890, Whitman wrote back that Symonds' "morbid inferences" were "damnable." Whitman scholars have never quite explained why the poet, a man who had romances with several men, erupted so furiously, but Symonds was crushed. Without Whitman's support, Symonds turned to Ulrichs when he wrote one of the first and boldest defenses of male love in 19th-century England. In 1891, Symonds privately printed "A Problem in Modern Ethics." He argued that "abnormal inclinations" are inborn and unchangeable and that laws against male-male sex are therefore unjust. Now convinced that scientific arguments were the best justification for "abnormality," Symonds approached a physician named Havelock Ellis and asked him to collaborate on a book. The result was Sexual Inversion, the first book-length study of homosexuality published in England. Symonds died in 1893 attended to by Angelo. Sexual Inversion was still incomplete, but when its first editions appeared, his name was on the title page. Anxious to preserve Symonds' literary reputation, his literary executor asked Ellis to remove it. Ellis complied, and Symonds' contribution was forgotten until 1964 when a biographer retold his story. Wik Wikholm produces http://gayhistory.com, an introduction to modern gay history. He can be reached on the site's discussion boards, or by e-mail at wik@gayhistory.com. For more Past Out, visit www.planetout.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 10, No. 12, Aug. 25, 2000. |