1850 - 1859

1850​    The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The relationship between Dimmesdale & 

                                Chillingworth has been described as homoerotic.  

        White-Jacket by Herman Melville.  Notable for the chapter ‘Killing Time.’  Ships are referred to

                       as “wooden-walls Gomorrahs of the sea.” The sailors are described in homoerotic

                       terms.

        In Memoriam by Tennyson – homoerotic mourning for death of Arthur Hallam.  The passion

                        expressed is found objectionable by some, including Gerard Manley Hopkins’ father.

        Tchaikovsky is sent to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg where he meets

                        and falls in love with Sergey Kireyev, a younger student.

​        David Copperfield by Dickens appears in book form.  There seem to be homoerotic elements 

                                between James Steerforth & young ‘Daisy’.  

        Jack Tier by Fenimore Cooper has two males apparently in love, but one turns out to be female.  

        Edward Protheroe, MP, is once again accused of luring boys to his home.  

​        In Egypt Flaubert is brought to ejaculation by a masseur.  

c.1851      Yokel’s Preceptor: “The increase of these monsters in the shape of men, commonly designated

                                Margeries, Poofs, &tc, of late years, in the great metropolis, renders it necessary for 

                                the sake of the public, that they should be made known.”  ‘Fair Eliza’ went out each 

                                evening looking for customers between Holborn & Regent St.  ‘Betsy H a “notorious 

                                & shameless pouf” could be found in the Strand, St Martin’s Court & Fleet Street.

1850-1​    Herman Melville (31) falls in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne (46).

1851​    Moby Dick by Herman Melville published.  The relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg is 

                                thought by many to be homo-erotic.  Early in the novel they share a bed, symbolically 

                                marry, and even give birth.  Note also chapter 94 ‘The Squeeze of the hand.’  

       It has been alleged that the young Henry Morton Stanley (10) may have been raped by the

                       headmaster of the workhouse he was lodged in.  

        Summer.  Melville & Hawthorne’s relationship ended in unexplained circumstances.

        ​Sexual acts between women were no longer illegal in Prussia.  

1852​    The Blithesdale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Some have seen the intense friendship 

                                between Hollingsworth & Coverdale as homoerotic & echoing that between

                                Hawthorne & Melville.   

        Poems by Richard Stoddard is dedicated to Bayard Taylor – they saw themselves as having a

                       poetic relationship akin to Lycidas & Theocritus and could speak of their relationship 

                       as between Hercules & Hylas.

        January. Gogol confesses to a bigoted priest about his same-sex urges.  He is told to fast and

                       prevent sleep. 

        21 February Gogol dies driven mad by sleep deprivation and being weakened by doctors

                       bleeding him too much.

        Emily Dickinson writes a letter to Susan Gilbert full of homoerotic desire.

        Tchaikovsky meets the future poet Aleksey Apukhtin when they become classmates.  

        Johann Ludwig Casper published ‘On Rape and Pederasty’, which was based on a confiscated 

                        diary of a Count who had belonged to a very active ‘Pederasts Club’.

        Karl Ulrichs is forced to resign as an assistant judge, probably because he is attracted to men.

        A proud same-sex lover writes to Dr Casper: “We are generally better and more gifted than 

                        other people… How can our sins be so great when they are committed by by men like

                        Plato, Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, Gustav III of Sweden and many others. 

                        Were Winckelmann and Platen vulgar men?”

1853​    Hieronymous Fränkel, Prussian doctor, studied Süsskind Blank, a curtain-hanger, and defined

                                 him as a ‘homo mollis’.

       An old American sailor said that buggery was fine onboard ship, but on land, buggers should be 

                        shot.

1854 ​    Thoreau’s Walden. Thoreau’s admiration for the form of the woodcutter Alex Therien is 

                                obvious.

        It is believed William Bankes secretly visits Kingston Lacy to see his treasures in situ before he 

                        died the following year.

        A transvestite ball was raided in Druids’ Hall, London.  A man (60) was dressed as a shepherd-

                        ess.  Previous balls had been ignored for the preceding 18 months.

        J.A. Symonds later looked back to this year when he went to Harrow.  He claimed handsome

                        boys were given girl’s names and that if a boy was referred to as a bigger boy’s

                        ‘bitch’, this meant he had yielded to his lover.

        Karl Heinrich Ulrichs resigns from the civil service of Hanover when his desire for men

                         becomes known by the authorities.  

1854-7​    Hans Christian Andersen spends his annual summer holidays with the Hereditary Grand Duke

                                 of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. 

1855​    Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.  The first edition only contains a poetic evocation of oral

                                 love.

        Poems of the Orient by Bayard Taylor – includes the homorerotic ‘To a Persian Boy.’ Other 

                        homoerotic poems include ‘Hylas’ and ‘the Bath.’

​        Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes.  

​        The Yokel’s Preceptor: or, More Sprees in London!.  It includes words of queer interest 

                                 including, ‘poof’, ‘margery’, ‘backgammon’ etc.  

1856    ​‘I and My Chimney’ by Herman Melville is published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine.  A secret 

                                closet is the source for the saying being in the closet: “infinite sad mischief has

                                resulted from the profane bursting open of secret recesses.”

        Mary Anderson (16) born in Govan, begins dressing as a man, which he maintains for over 40 

                        years.  [1901].

        Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, though married, begins a platonic love relationship with Clemens 

                        Petersen, a Danish critic.  

1856-9    ​Walt Whitman (37) shares a room with Fred Vaughan (19), a clerk, sailor & train conductor. 

                                 Fred may be the inspiration for the Calamus poems.  

1857​      Baudelaire’s poems Lesbos & Femmes damnées were censored because of their lesbian 

                                content.  

        The Times drew attention to the mincing & bowing of drapers’ assistants.

        30 May.  Little Dorrit by Dickens published in book form.  Some have seen the character of 

                       Miss Wade to be that of a lesbian. 

        The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs by William Acton sells many copies,

                        and perpetuates the false symptoms caused by masturbation.  

        A Medico-Legal Study of Indecent Assaults by Auguste-Ambroise Tardieu – the third section 

                        deals with sodomy and pederasty.  The book sells better than many novels.

1858​    John Aldington Symonds (17) discovers Plato’s Phaedrus and The Symposium. 

                January.  Alfred Pretor informs Symonds by letter of his affair with Charles Vaughan, their

                                 headmaster. Symonds informs his father who threatens to expose Vaughan, who

                                 resigns.  

​       Spring – Symonds began a chaste love affair with William Dyer, a choirboy three years younger 

                                than himself, which lasted for a year.  

​       Eton schoolmaster William Johnson publishes Ionica, which contains some mildly homoerotic

                               poems.  

        Practisches Handbuch by Casper.

        In Armour et Mariage by Proudon in which the author complained that an odious aspersion had

                      been thrown on the love of Jesus & John.  He saw the Gospel story as  “a Christian 

                      imitation of Greek love.”

        Eric, or Little by Little by Frederic William Farrar.  The boys use epithets like “dear fellow” 

                      and kiss each other before dying, so were deemed too effeminate by some critics.  

1858-9​    Whitman experienced his second same-sex love affair with ‘M’.

1858-62    Walter Pater and J.R. McQueen exchanged intimate letters, but these were later destroyed.

1859​      Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.  Fitzgerald seems to have

                               homoerotic feelings for other men.  He is devastated when William Kenworthy Brown, 

                               whom he met when the latter was 16, dies in a riding accident.  

         Monsieur Auguste by Joseph Méry includes what would now be called a male homosexual, but 

                        whose identity is too carefully concealed by the author, unless readers spot references

                        to Antinous, Naples & Girodet.

         A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens includes Sydney Carton, a confirmed bachelor consumed with

                        self-loathing, redeems his loneliness with an act of self-sacrifice.

        Karl Heinrich Ulrichs attempts to discuss his homosexuality at the Scientific Institute of 

                        Frankfurt, but his membership is removed.  

        Cambacérès’s home town votes against erecting a statue because of his sexual morality.  

        Henry Morton Stanley (18) flees from a New Orleans brothel – he may have been homosexual.  

        17 April.  Robert Brough in Lloyd’s Weekly reports: “I remember seeing a pretty, effeminate 

        little dandy at a picture exhibition, whom I heard make some sensible remarks on the pictures.  

        He turned out to be an eminent prize-fighter.”

        Robert Herbert & Sir John Bramston travel to Australia together, and they live together for 20

                        years.  The farmstead they shared was known as ‘Herston’ an amalgamation of their

                        surnames.  The suburb of Herston sprung up around it.

        Arne by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson – male friendship thwarted by a mother & a priest.

        Luigi Settembrini writes The Neoplatonics – it is an erotic fantasy and includes 2 men indulging

                       in anal intercourse.  The same-sex relationship gives both joy and satisfaction and has

                       emotional & erotic dimensions – rare for the time.  It remained unpublished for over a 

                       century.

        Simeon Solomon paints David Playing the Harp before Saul – sexually ambiguous.

1859-60   WaltWhitman goes through an emotional crisis, but his poems are born out of it.

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter, Queer City: Gay London From the Romans to the Present Day, London: Chatto & Windus, 2017.

Aldrich, Robert, Gay Life Stories, London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.

Aldrich, Robert & Garry Wotherspoon (eds.), Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II: London,

                    Routledge, 2001.

Bray, Alan, The Friend, University of Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Griffin, Gabriele, (ed.), Who’s Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing, Routledge: London, 2002. 

Norton, Rictor, My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, San Francisco: Leyland Publications: 1998.

Rowse, A.L., Homosexuals in History, London: Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 1977.

Spencer, Colin, Homosexuality, a History, London: Fourth Estate, 1995.

Woods, Gregory, Homosexuality in Literature, London: Yale University Press, 1998.