1860 - 1869

The only known image of Walt Whitman with his longtime friend (and possible lover) Peter Doyle. It was taken in 1865.

1860​        Whitman produced the Calamus series of poems in his collection Leaves of Grass. 

​            In India a British colonial statute made male same-sex acts illegal. 

            5 September.  Catherine Coome was charged in Northampton for impersonating a man and

                        engaging the affections of a young girl.  The system had no power to punish her under

                        existing laws.  

            Karl Maria Kertbeny, coiner of the word homosexual, visits Hans Christian Andersen in 

                        Geneva, and their talk made Andersen feel “incredibly sinister” and depressed.  

            Death of Arthur Schopenhauer.  Unpublished papers on sexual love were suppressed by his

                        executors.  

1861​        Sodomy is no longer a capital offence in England.

            ​Cecil Dreeme by Theodore Winthrop is published posthumously.  The protagonist is attracted 

                                to 2 men, one sinister, and the other wholesome.  The latter turns out to be a woman in

                                disguise.  It has been called one of the queerest American novels of the 19th-century.

            Nils Ljungberg makes a public attack on the Swedish Church’s dogmatic view of Christ.  He

                       is supported by the philosopher and writer, Carl Pontus Wikner.  

1861-2          Winter.  Hans Christian Andersen is infatuated with Danish dancer Harald Scharff, but there

                                is disagreement if this relationship ever became physical.  

1861-5​        Casper’s work becomes available in an English translation.​

1862​         Karl Heinrich Ulrichs used the term “Uranian” for the first time.

​            22 September.  Ulrichs writes to his sister stating he can never love a woman, and asks her to 

                                circulate the letter with 6 other family members.  

            28 November.  Ulrichs prepares a pamphlet about his sexuality and his findings, which he 

                        

                       originally circulates among 8 family members.

            Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti contains scenes of sexual passion between women.

            John Brent by Theodore Winthrop.   A handsome cowboy is the object of same-sex

                       idealization: “the Adonis of the copper-skins!”  “What a poem the fellow is!  I wish I 

                       

                       was an Indian myself for such a companion, or better, a squaw, to be made love to by 

                       him.”

            L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola by Antonio Rocco is translated into French (1630), but is 

                       banned.  The print run was almost completely destroyed.  

            Gerard Manley Hopkins had read ‘Hylas’ & ‘Thalusia’ by this date, so was aware of the 

                        ancient Greek institution of paederastia.  

            Louis Canler, policeman, publishes his memoirs, which includes a 30-page chapter on “The 

                        Anti-Physicals [unnatural sex] & Blackmailers.”

            A marriage manual perpetuates the fallacy that lesbians had an enlarged clitoris.  

1863​        A note in the margins of Michelangelo’s poems in his grandnephew’s handwriting is deciph-

                                ered for the first time.  It said that the poems must not appear in their original form

                                because of the masculine love expressed in them.

            George Paddon arrested on Hackney Road, dressed in a crinoline.  

            Vie de Jésus by Renan claimed that Jesus’s love for John was exaggerated by John’s

                       adherents, and Jesus had no knowledge of Greek culture.  

1864        ​Simeon Solomon paints the homoerotic Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytelene.

           John Aldington Symonds tries to cure his same-sex desires by getting married.

           Walt Whitman cares for injured soldiers during the American Civil War. 

           Arthur Munby becomes suspicious after seeing a ball in Camberwell advertised at exorbitant 

                       prices.  He realises that: “not a few of the youths were elaborately disguised as women

                       of various kinds; some so well that only their voices showed they were not girls.”

            Charles Kingsley makes an attack on the ‘effeminate’ John Henry Newman.  

            Charles Warren Stoddard visits the South Sea Islands and his first same-sex liaisons.  

            Karl Heinrich Ulrichs publishes the first of 12 texts calling for legal reform for ‘Uranians.’

            ​Paul Verlaine has a relationship with Lucien Viotti, and they collaborate on the libretti of

                                 Fisch-Ton-Kan. 

            Giovanni Bosco founds a religious order the Salesian Fathers, which helped youths.

            Samuel Butler returned to Britain from New Zealand with the handsome young Charles

                        Pauli.  

            9 September. Wagner admits to a third party that the young King Ludwig II adores him.  

            September.  Samuel Hase (15) a printer’s apprentice in Norwich, is attracted to an order of 

                        Anglican Benedictine monks.  The superior, Father Ignatius, seems to have been 

                        attracted to Hase, and brother Augustine writes Hase a love-letter, which is inter-

                        cepted by Hase’s mother and sends it to the Norfolk News, who mount a campaign 

                        against the monastery and its order.  

1864-70         Forschungen zur mannmännlichen Liebe [Love Between Males] by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.

                        12 pamphlets classifying 8 categories of men who love their own gender.  He referred

                         to them as “Urnings” or “Uranians.”  This has been called the third sex theory.

1865          ​21 August.  The Manchester Guardian breaks the story of Dr James Barry, who on his death

                                 had proved to be a woman.  

            Karl Heinrich Ulrichs drafts a list of ‘Bylaws for the Urning Union.’

​            Gerard Manley Hopkins (20) meets and falls in love with Digby Mackworth Dolben (17), a 

                                poet.

            Friedrich Nietzsche falls in love with fellow-student Erwin Rohde at Leipzig.  

            Walt Whitman (46) meets Peter Doyle (20+) on his tram. Peter was the conductor. Whitman

                       loses his Washington civil service job for publishing an ‘indecent book’.  

            Prince Paul vom Thurm become aide-de-camp of Ludwing II. They become very close, 

                        although Ludwig eventually ended the relationship after some tiny sleights, which

                        Paul failed to notice.

            Edward Fitzgerald (56) meets Joseph “Posh” Fletcher (27).  Fitzgerald becomes his business 

                        partner and mentor.  

            J.A. Symonds first encounters the poems of Walt Whitman. 

            Our Mutual Friend by Dickens.  Eugene Wrayburn & Mortimer Lightwood have a homo-

                        erotic death scene together.

            Simeon Solomon draws Love Talking to Boys for Edward Poynter; and Love Among the 

                        Schoolboys probably drawn for Algernon Swinburne, and subsequently owned by

                        Oscar Wilde.  The most homoerotic of all, The Bride, the Bridegroom, and Sad Love 

                        also dates from this year.  

            The Parisian police noticed the spreading of same-sex activity.  It was traced back to a club in 

                        the Grenelle area of Paris. 

            7 February.  A coded letter was sent to a Swiss businessman in London to a Swedish man 

                        working for a Russian aristocrat temporarily in Paris. The letter gave careful details of 

                        the raids on Parisian same-sex activity.

            Summer.  Walter Pater & Charles Shadwell, a beautiful youth, travelled alone through Italy. 

                        A rare time when Pater’s sisters were not present.

1866​        January.  The Pall Mall Gazette publishes 3 articles describing events in the casual ward of 

                                 Lambeth Workhouse.  Frederick Greenwood described the “infamous” nocturnal 

                                 sounds.

            Edward Fitzgerald pays for a new boat to be built for “Posh” Fletcher called Meum and 

                        Tuum.  

            Matthew Arnold completes ‘Thrysis’, an elegy for Arthur Clough. 

            Poems & Ballads by Swinburne – causes outrage, and is withdrawn from circulation by the

                         publisher.  ‘Dolores’ – masochism; ‘Hermaphroditus’ – bisexuality & ‘Anactoria’ – 

                         Sappho & her female lover.    

            Don Leon is published anonymously.  It has wrongly been attributed to Byron.  It features a 

                         litany of sodomy trials, ands seems to be written in an attempt to create a debate.  

                         There is a theory that William Beckford may be the author.  It was written in the 

                         1830s.

            Weiwha, Native American ‘berdache’, is invited to visit Washington by anthropologist, 

                         Mathilde Coxe Stevenson, where she makes quite an impression.    

            ​Horatio Alger, novelist, flees Brewster, Massachusetts for New York after allegations of

                                 ‘unnatural familiarity with boys.’   He failed to deny the allegations.  

            Whitman meets Peter Doyle, a 19-year-old Irish bus conductor.  After a bus ride alone

                         together during a storm, they enjoy a long friendship.  Whitman taught Doyle to read,

                         how to spell, geography and simple arithmetics.  

            Edward Carpenter reads Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and resigns his Cambridge Fellowship,

                         and starts lecturing on socialism and writing on homosexuality.  

            Alfred Corning Clark meets and falls in love with Norwegian tenor Lorentz Severin 

                        Skougaard in Paris.  

            The death penalty for same-sex offences is abolished in Denmark.  

            Pierre Loti, writer, becomes a sailor and meets fellow-sailor Joseph Bernard – they will visit

                       Senegal & Tahiti and will be close companions for several years.   

            Solomon and Swinburne visited Rosetti in Cheyne Walk, and disturbed Rosetti when they 

                        chased each other naked up and down the staircase.

            William Dugdale first publishes Don Leon, a poem he thought to have been by Byron, but 

                        possibly written by William Beckford.  The poem celebrates homosexual love.  

            L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola by Antonio Rocco is reissued in Brussels (1630).  

1866-72      Carl Justi publishes his 3-volume biography of Johann Winckelmann in which his love for his

                                 own sex is as open as possible for the time.

1867 ​        Oscar Browning visits Italy with Simeon Solomon.  The latter paints Bacchus, which depicts 

                                youthful male figures of idealised, highly androgynous beauty.  

           ​Edward Carpenter at Cambridge begins to explore his attraction to men.  He forms an 

                                emotional attachment to the future Master of Trinity Hall, Edward Beck, although 

                                the latter ends the friendship.  Beck goes on to marry.  

            Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger – slight homoerotic touches among N.York bootblacks.   

            6 May. King Ludwig II of Bavaria gets to know the handsome equerry Richard Hornig, who

                        who remains with him for 20 years.

            Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg becomes very close with Count Kuno von Moltke whilst both 

                        were studying at the War Academy.

            Walter Pater, discussing Johann Winckelmann explicitly mentions his attraction to young 

                        men.

            Mary Benson married to future Archbishop of Canterbury, falls in love with Emily

                       Edwardes, a neighbour living 2 miles away.

            Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire.  Baudelaire is fascinated by lesbians, who are

                       portrayed as beautiful but with condemned souls.

            29 August.  Karl Heinrich Ulrichs declares his homosexuality to the Congress of German 

                      Jurists in Munich.  He is the first person to make this pronouncement in history.  

            Hans Christian Andersen is infatuated with Robert Watt, theatre manager, for the remainder

                      of the decade.

1867-70  Tchaikovsky has an affair with fellow-student Alexey Aputhkin.

1868​    Karl Maria Kertbeny coins the term “homosexualist” in a letter to Karl Ulrichs, but it failed to 

                                catch on at first.  

        Les Aimes by Paul Verlaine – an erotic work focusing on lesbian sexuality.

        Former Brother Stanislaus mounts a campaign against his former superior Father Ignatius.  He 

                        claims improper practices took place.  At a London meeting 2 youths charged Brother 

                        Augustine with same-sex practices.  

        J.A. Symonds falls in love with Norman Moor.  They have a chaste affair for 4 years. 

        Walter Pater introduces Gerard Manley Hopkins to Simeon Solomon. 

        Prince Paul marries, which ends the very close relationship with King Ludwing II.  

        October.  For the next 6 months Ernest Boulton [see April 1870] lives with Louis Hurt, a young 

                        Post Office surveyor, in Edinburgh.  Boulton meets Hurt’s friend, John Fiske, who 

                        falls for Boulton, and subsequently sends him romantic letters.  

        ​‘On a Little-Known Psychopathic Condition’ by Wilhelm Griesinger defines same-sex desire as

                                 an inherited, mental condition and called for a study of the patient’s mind.

        A patient asks to be examined by Legrand de Saulle for signs of homosexuality after reading Dr

                       Tardieu’s description of their physical attributes.

        The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.  Lucy Yolland harbours unrequited feelings for Rosanna 

                        Spearman.  Some have seen Ezra Jennings as a queer-coded character. 

1868-9     Edward Carpenter meets Walt Whitman.

1868-72  Tchaikovsky has an affair with wealthy Vladimir Shilovsky.

1869​    Hungarian Karoly-Maria Benkert coins the term homoszexualitás.

        ‘The Holy Grail’ by Tennyson – homoerotic elements.  

        Around this time John W. Sterling meets cotton broker James O. Bloss, and they live together

                     for the remainder of their lives.  

        One of Karl Ulrichs’ correspondents informed him that he was photographed with a cigar in 

                    hand in an attempt to disguise his sexuality.  

        Karl Ulrichs sent a copy of his pamphlet to Karl Marx, who forwards it on to Friedrich Engels.  

                    The latter saw the nascent organisation as a rival of international socialism.

        A boy alleged that he had been in a sexual relationship with Brother Stanislaus with the 

                    knowledge and encouragement of Father Ignatius [1864]. 

        Autumn.  Edward Fitzgerald argues with “Posh” Fletcher over the latter’s habitual drunkenness.

        Carl Westphal wrote an article on ‘contrary sexual sensations’ and by doing so the homosexual

                    became a real person, “a past, a case history, and a childhood.”  It has been argued that 

                    this was the making of the modern homosexual.  

        Peter Doyle believes he has caught syphilis and is depressed.  Whitman tries his best to look 

                    after him and raise his spirits. 

        Edward Carpenter reads Leaves of Grass for the first time, and is transformed.  

        Oscar Browning & Simeon Solomon escape to Italy after s same-sex scandal.  

        March.  Clemens Petersen, a Danish critic, is exposed as a homosexual and flees to the U.S.

                     Peterson loses all his friends except Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.  Hans Christian Andersen 

                     felt sympathy for his plight.

        Hans von Marées, painter (32) meets Adolf Hildebrand, sculptor (22), in Rome – they become 

                     artistic collaborators and have a deep romantic friendship for 8 years until Hilde-

                     brandt’s marriage.

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. 

Malcolm, Noel, Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1759, Oxford: OUP, 2024.

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.