1880 - 1889

  John Addington Symonds by Carlo Orsi

1880​        New and Old by John Addington Symonds.  Includes the poems ‘Friend to Friend’ & ‘The

                             Passing Stranger.’

            Nana by Emile Zola.  When preparing the book, Zola & his wife made notes on the lesbian

                    restaurant at 17 rue des Martyrs, Paris.

            The Discovery of the Soul, 2nd edition by Gustav Jaegar is published in German. 

            Boy Worship, an anonymous pamphlet includes a scene in which a man attempts to pick up 2

                     boys in an Oxford bookshop.  It also republishes a satiric sonnet from The New 

                    Republic, as if it was meant seriously.  

            Edward Carpenter meets Albert Fearnehough, a married scythe-maker, and they become 

                    lovers.

            ‘Brothers’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins – presents fraternal love in the mode of the Greek

                    paederastia.   ‘Felix Randal’ has also been read in terms of homoeroticism.  

            At Cornell University a beautiful student turned up at a concert with a ‘male’ escort.  The 

                    escort is another female student in male guise.  The pretty student is expelled, but

                    many feel she has been badly treated, and she makes loud demands to be readmitted.

                    She is accepted and finishes her degree in due course.

            Dr Brouardel pointed out that the famous funnel-shaped anus, could easily be produced by 

                    the cold hands of an energetic doctor.

            The Temperance Hall in Hulme, Manchester is rented by a private drag club, where the can-

                    can was performed in front of a blind accordionist & with blackened windows.

            A Love Agony. Design by Maudle by George du Maurier shows a Wildean figure narciss-

                    istically reclining by a pond.  

            Captain Moonlite [Andrew Scott] while awaiting his hanging, revealed in letters to friends 

                    his explicit love for James Nesbit, whom he had met in jail & who had been killed in a 

                    shoot-out in which Scott had been taken prisoner.  

            Herman Bang, novelist was busy establishing himself as Denmark’s most notorious & exem-

                    plary homosexual man.

            Karl Heinrich Ulrichs leaves Germany for voluntary exile in Italy. 

            Paul Verlaine in love with Lucien Letinois, moves with him and his parents to a farm in 

                    northern France.

c.1880​     Classified advertisements began to appear in Austrian newspapers looking for same-sex 

                             partners.

1880-3    ​Gosse & Hamo holiday together in Scotland, Paris, Switzerland & Northern England.       

1880-3​    A German living in Tokyo found the old samurai spirit flourishing at the Manchu Front: “where

                         a soldier in love with another had fought at the risk of his own life, rushing willingly to the 

                        deadly spot.”

1881    ​Sins of the City of the Plains; or recollections of a Mary-Ann by Jack Saul. A work of porn-

                        ography allegedly written by a former rent-boy from The Cleveland Case.  It revealed 

                        willing guardsmen could be found at a tobacconist next to Albany Barracks, Regent’s Park; 

                        and 6 other brothels existed in London “where only soldiers are received and where gentle-

                        men can sleep with them.”

        Morality in Public Schools by Canon J.M. Wilson. “Immorality, in a special sense…has been of 

                late increasing among the upper classes in England, and especially in the great cities…. 

                There is amply sufficient ground for alarm that the nation may be on the eve of an age of 

                voluptuousness & reckless immorality.”

        La Femme de Paul by Maupassant features a hotel-restaurant favoured by lesbians.

        J.A. Symonds meets Venetian gondolier, Angelo Fusato, and they remain in a relationship for

                the following 12 years.

        12 February.  The print Maudle on the Choice of a Profession by George du Maurier contains a

                Wilde-like figure exclaiming: “how consummately lovely your son is, Mrs Brown.  This

                 predates any known same-sex affairs by Oscar Wilde.  

        After resitting his Oxford exams A.E. Housman lodges with Moses and Albert Jackson, while 

                he works in the Patent Office. Housman is in unrequited love with Moses Jackson.

        Georg Riedel, later a Munich milkman, is serving in the military and has sexual relations with 

                Philipp Eulenberg [1907].

        Henry Scott Tuke paints oil studies of male nudes during a tour of Italy.  

        April.  Patience; or Bunthorne’s Bride by Gilbert & Sullivan is performed.  It’s a satire on

                aestheticism, and especially Oscar Wilde.  

1882​    Walt Whitman meets Oscar Wilde in Camden. 

        Gerard Manley Hopkins confirms to Robert Bridges by letter that there are similarities between

                 Walt Whitman and himself. (18 October).

​        Anima Figura by John Addington Symonds.  Includes the poems ‘Chimaera’, ‘The Pursuit of

                           Beauty, ‘The Vanishing Point’ & The Use of Pain’.

        Tuberose & Meadowsweet, a collection of homoerotic verse by Marc-André Raffalovich.

        La Faustin by Edmond de Goncourt contains Georges Selwyn accidentally crushes any delicate,

                   precious object he holds.  This became coded behaviour of a typical homosexual.

        The Blood of the Gods by Jean Lorrain – includes a cycle called ‘Ephèbes’, which has 

                   androgyny, ‘misunderstood love,’ ‘bizarre love,’ criminal passion & references to 

                   Ganymede & Antinous.  

        Charles Ricketts (16) meets Charles Shannon.  They later become lifelong partners.  The

                   literary subjects they illustrated often had a homoerotic interpretation.  

        John Singer Sargent meets fellow artist Albert de Belleroche, whom he later travels with and 

                   paints in the nude.  They may have been the loves of each other’s lives.  

​        Edward Carpenter moves to Millthorpe, Derbyshire with Albert Ferneyhough & his family. 

        Constantine Cavafy, poet, moves to Constantinople from Alexandria, and may have been

                   initiated into sex by his cousin George. 

        Valentin Magnan & Jean Charcot in ‘Inversion du sens génital’ describe a sociable, kind,

                   erudite, moustachioed man of military bearing who became a university professor at 30. 

                   He also had a helpless attraction to men and fluttering eyelashes.

        James Hadley produced an Aesthetic Teapot for Royal Worcester depicting an effete man on

                   one side.

​        Cecil Rhodes (29) meets Neville Pickering in South Africa, 4 years his junior, who is described

                             as the love of Rhodes’ life.  He rushes back from important negotiations to celebrate 

                            Pickering’s birthday (25).  He draws up a new will leaving his entire estate to Pickering.

1883​    Towards Democracy by Edward Carpenter.  Carpenter modelled his poetic style on Whitman’s

                           Leaves of Grass.  

        The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle has Allan-a-Dale with the face of a 

                 maiden, and a voice that “charmeth all men.” E.M. Forster saw the Merry Men as a

                 domestic Theban Band.  Friar Tuck gets into bed naked against an already sleeping Robin. 

                 Robin’s death-bed scene with Little John has been described as one of the best-known

                elegies of popular same-sex fiction.

    A Problem in Greek Ethics by J.A. Symonds is published in an edition of 10 copies. A critic has

                stated that it is the first serious work on homosexuality published in UK.  After reading

                Symonds’ work, Edmund Gosse finally admits his same-sex desires. 

    ‘Echoes from Theocritus’ a homoerotic poem in classical guise by Edward Lefroy is published.  

    ​Punch refers to Oscar Wilde as a “Mary-Ann” - a common term for a male prostitute.

    Stockholm has the beginnings of a homosexual community.  

    The Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News depicted Oscar Wilde in prison uniform showing the 

                “frightful foreshadowing of our Oscar’s future.”  

1883-5  Thomas Eakins paints The Swimming Hole – contemporary rendering of a Classical Arcadian

                         theme – depicts 7 male nudes.

The Swimming Hole by Thomas Eakins

1884​    À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans.  

       ​Edward Carpenter visits Walt Whitman again.

        ​Fridolin’s Mystical Marriage, English version of Wilbrandt’s 1884 novel.  

        ​Dr Louis Martineau: “anal deformation by this unnatural act has regrettably become more and

                         more numerous, proving that lustful acts are increasing by the day… Sapphism and 

                         sodomy are growing at an unheard-of-rate.”

        Cyril & Lionel, a love poem by André Raffalovich is published under a female pseudonym.  

        28 January ‘Pretty Boys’ by J.M. Barrie is published anonymously in the Nottingham Journal –

               a satire on dressing young boys as girls – he was sacked.  

        22 February.  Henry James writes to J.A. Symonds a letter which seems to hint at a mutual love 

                of Italy and “a common passion.”

​        Edward Perry Warren studies at Oxford University where he meets his lover John Marshall.

                        They later become collectors of classical antiquities.

        Getting Married I by August Strindberg – believes homosexuality is caused by same-sex

               segregation.  

        ‘The Author of Beltraffio’ by Henry James is published in the English Illustrated Magazine. It 

                has an aesthetic hero like Symonds.  

        ​Vagabunduli Libellus by J.A. Symonds.  Includes the poems ‘Stella Maris’, and ‘A Portrait.’

        Monsieur Vénus by Rachilde has Roule (an Amazonian) seduce Jacques, who has the body of a 

                girl and the soul of a woman.  He is in effect a male lesbian and his seducer a female 

                sodomite.  

        A young lesbian is prescribed cold showers by Dr Kiernan of Chicago.  She marries her lover’s 

                brother.

        Neville Pickering suffers a serious infection from poisonous thorns, and is devotedly nursed for

                 6 weeks by Cecil Rhodes, who neglects his business concerns.  Pickering dies.  Rhodes

                 weeps hysterically at the funeral.  

​        Henry Scott Tuke paints his first painting of boys in boats at Newlyn, Cornwall. 

        Baron Ferdinand ‘Ferdy’ de Rothschild writes to Lord Rosebery a passionate letter in 

                 extravagant terms, which read like the words of a lover.  

        20 October.  In the early hours Lord Ronald Gower is stopped by a guard within the precincts of 

                 St. James’s Palace.  An altercation took place, questions are asked in Parliament, but 

                 Gower apologises and the matter is dropped.

        Guglielmo Rapinett, Maltese politician, is arrested for attempting to seduce a British soldier. 

                 Every member of the Maltese Legislative council & 3000 citizens petitioned for his 

                 release.  

1885​      Richard Burton’s first translation of The Arabian Nights.  He includes a terminal essay on

                        ‘Pederasty’.  He claimed the vice of sodomy was popular and endemic in the ‘Sotadic

                         Zone, lying between latitudes 30ᵒ and 43ᵒ north.

        ​Gli amori degli uomini by Carlo Mantegazza is published (English title: The Sexual Relations of 

                        Mankind.)

        The Bostonians by Henry James celebrates a ‘Boston marriage’ – female friendship. 

        Modernités by Jean Lorrain – the sonnet ‘Prince héritier’ features sodomy between an aristocrat 

                and stable boys.  

        Ethel Smyth’s 7-year relationship with Lisl von Herzogenberg is ended by Lisl after Smyth has

                a complicated flirtation with Henry Brewster, Lisl’s brother-in-law.  Ethel returns to 

                England, and a friendship begins with Mary Benson wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

        Edward Perry Warren begins to collect Greek vases, many of which feature homosexual

               relationships or scenes. 

        Karl Ulrichs publishes ‘Manor’ in which a young man is loved by the ghost of a sailor.  He

               drives a stake through the dead sailor’s heart, and promptly dies of longing.  

        Marius the Epicureran by Walter Pater.  Note chapter 7. 

        Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings & a Literal Translation by Henry Wharton.  The

              translations of Sappho’s verse are by John Addington Symonds.  

        J.A. Symonds writes the entry on Politian for Encyclopaedia Britannica.

        A complete edition of Hecatelegium by Pacifico Massimi is published in Paris.  [1489]. 

​        A.E. Housman moves out of lodgings with Moses Jackson possibly after professing his love for

                     him.  He keeps a cutting about a young homosexual navel cadet who committed suicide.  It is 

                     found among his papers at his death.  It is thought to have been an influence on his poetry.  

        Herman Bangs has a love-affair with Max Eisfeld, Berlin actor, which lasts just over a year.

        Martin Kok is involved in another Danish homosexual scandal.  The homosexual element of the

             scandal was completely fictitious.  

        Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac meets Gabriel Yturri, a young Peruvian, who becomes

             his long-term companion for 20 years.

       Enrico Morselli grouped perversion and perversity under the term ‘ommosessual-ismo,’ reserv-

                ing the term ‘uranismo’ for homosexuality “that truly extraordinary phemomenon of the

                 sexual psyche.”

         The Criminal law Amendment Act is discussed in Parliament.  The resulting law has been 

                labelled as a blackmailer’s charter.

         Lorentz Severin Skougaard dies from typhoid.

        Henry Scott Tuke moves to Falmouth and begins to specialise in painting male nudes, such as

                 The Bathers of that year.  

        Robert de Montesquiou meets Gabriel Yturri, who becomes his secretary, companion & lover.

1885-6​    The Bostonians by Henry James is serialised in The Century Magazine.  It has a lesbian theme.

c.1885​    A St Louis doctor, Charles H. Hughes, reported male negroes dressed as women were dancing

                     with men.  The black me had their names & addresses taken, but their white dancing partners

                     were allowed to go free.

1885-1910 Edward Perry Warren collects ancient Greek vases with same-sex relations. 

1886           Psychopathia sexualis by Richard von Krafft-Ebing is published – various forms of sexual

                ​‘deviation’ are classified, which are shown to be innate.

        Thomas Eakins is dismissed from his position teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine

                 Arts.  He is alleged to have removed a male model’s loin-cloth in front of a mixed-sex life 

                 class.

        Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton by Arthur Benson.  Hamilton seems to be emerging from the

                 closet, but realises his friend’s same-sex attraction, and makes an angry retreat.  

        The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by R.L. Stevenson.  Stevenson used hints of homo-

                sexuality to create an atmosphere of unspeakable and mysterious depravity.

        Walter Harris arrives in Tangier, and builds a luxurious Villa, the Villa Harris.  

        Getting Married II by August Strindberg – homosexuality is an occupational illness for monks

                 & sailors.  Homosexuality should not be a crime.  

        Oscar Wilde (35) is seduced by Robbie Ross (17).  Sometimes said to be his first same-sex

                 relationship.

        Julien Chevalier publishes a 520-page study of Sexual Inversion, containing third-hand case

                 studies of patients’ accounts transcribed by doctors.  

​        Richard Burton’s translation of The Perfumed Garden by Shaykh Nafzawi is published.  

        Magnus Hirschfield moves to Berlin, where he will begin his campaign for homosexual rights.  

​        Joseph Peabody Gardner Jr commits suicide, probably for unrequited love of Logan Pearsall

                         Smith.

1886-7​    George Grey Bernard is commissioned by Alfred Corning Clark to sculpt a homoerotic tomb

                         for Skougaard called Brotherly Love.  

        Edward Carpenter was in a tender relationship with George Hukin, a razor grinder.

1886-8​    Further translations of The Arabian Nights translated by Richard Burton appear.  

1887​      December.  ‘The Model’ by J.A. Symonds is published in The Fortnightly Review

        Canute the Great, a drama by ‘Michael Field’ – includes a love scene between two women. 

        William Eakins meets Whitman, and finds a kindred spirit. He paints Whitman’s favourite

                 portrait of himself.

        Tchaikovsky confides to his diary: “I have never loved anyone so strongly as him, meaning

                 Eduard Sack, who had committed suicide some 14 years earlier.  

        Charles Robert Spencer married Margaret Baring, although his name has been linked to many

                 sensitive young men.

        White Cockades: An Incident of the ‘Forty-Five’ by ‘Xavier Mayne’ [Edward Prime-Stevenson]

                 – romantic teenage friendships.  

        Getting Married II by August Strindberg – the levelling of the differences between men &

                 women could lead to same-sex desire between men, but also for the first time between

                 women.  

        Hans von Marées paints The Abduction of Ganymede.  

        Imaginary Portraits by Walter Pater – contains the homoerotic ‘Denys L’Auxerrois.’

1887-8​    Goldsworthy Dickinson (scholar) fell in unrequited love with Roger Fry.  

1888​    Whitman writes to Horace Traubel that Edward Carpenter is “one of the torch-bearers, as they

                             say: an exemplar of a loftier England.” 

        Alfred C Clark commissions George Bernard to sculpt a marble version of his Struggle of the 

                    Two Natures in Man.  

        La Folie érotique by Benjamin Ball: “sexual perversion can coexist with a perfectly normal

                     mental state and even with the most brilliant intellectual faculties.”

        Sodome by Henri d’Argis contains a homoerotic shower scene, and the protagonist dies as a

                     masturbating lunatic.  

        Félix Carlier, policeman, published a book on Parisian prostitutes in which he included 230

                     pages on ‘anti-physical’ [ie unnatural] prostitution.  Carlier argued that homosexuality

                     “was a vice that should be a misdemeanour.”  He believed it led directly to blackmail & 

                    other crimes.  

         Robbie Ross is dunked in a Cambridge fountain by fellow students. He catches pneumonia.

        ‘Hyacinthus’ a Uranian poem by Lord Henry Somerset.  

        Paul Verlaine meets & falls in love with the younger painter Frédéric-Auguste Cazals.

        Friedrich Nietzsche falls ill and is looked after by his homophobic sister, who attempts to 

                    censor his books and letters.  

        January. Death of Edward Lear.  Papers mentioning his frustrated love for Franklin Lushington

                     were destroyed.

        Charles Kains Jackson becomes editor of Artist & Journal of Home Culture – he smuggles

                     homoerotic content in between reviews of exhibitions & oil-paint adverts.

        Edward Perry Warren sets up home in Lewes House, Sussex with archaeologist John Marshall.  

        ‘Epithalamion’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins – his most homoerotic poem.

        Howard Sturgis (33) buys a house near Windsor Great Park & moves in with his lover 

        William Haynes-Smith (17).  They remain together until Sturgis dies in 1920.

c.1888    ​Tchaikovsky begins a lifelong relationship with his nephew, Vladimir Davïdov [‘Bob’].

1888-9​    Edward Carpenter lived with Cecil Reddie, and then helped him found Abbotsholme School in 

                            Derbyshire.

1889​    Long Ago, poems by ‘Michael Field’, imitations of the style and subjects of Sappho.  

        22 March. Tchaikovsky has sex with a negro in a Paris hotel room.  

        July – a male brothel was discovered at 19 Cleveland Street.  Telegraph boys were being paid

                   for sex with aristocrats.  Lord Henry Somerset is questioned by the police, but is allowed 

                    to flee abroad.  Jack Saul was a male prostitute who worked there. He claimed that often

                   the police had turned a blind eye.

        J.A. Symonds begins writing his memoirs. 

  ​      Oscar Wilde writes ‘The Story of Mr H.W’ – speculating on the identity of the young man

                             addressed in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

        ‘To R.B.’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins – has been read in terms of homoeroticism.​

        Charles Hirsch of the Libraire Parisienne on Coventry Street has Oscar Wilde as a client, who is

                   often accompanied by distinguished young men. Later, the manuscript of Teleny is left in 

                    the shop in brown wrapping paper by various young men, for others to collect and 

                    return. 

        Eline Vere by Louis Couperus – a sensuous woman’s story – actually a self-portrait.

        Oscar Wilde meets John Gray who becomes his intimate companion for 4 years.

        Songs of Adieu by Lord Henry Somerset.  The supposed first volume of ‘Uranian’poetry. 

        A Marriage Below Zero by Alan Dale (Alfred Cohen). A homosexual man marries a woman,

                     which ends in disaster.

        Zé’Böim, a lesbian novel by Maurice de Souillac is published with a new explicit cover.  The

                     entire edition was seized, and the writer & publisher were punished.

        At Browning’s funeral in Westminster Abbey, Edmund Gosse is spotted looking at photos of

                     Eugene Sandow.

        Dr Frank Lydston suggested that female sexual deviants should have their ovaries or clitoris

                     removed.  [see 1917]

        October.  Edward Hamblar, 61, ship’s joiner, is found surrounded by 600 people who suspect

                     him of being Jack the Ripper.  

        The first issue of The Dial magazine is issued by Charles Ricketts & Charles Shannon.

​        Ned Warren & John Marshall (see 1884) live together in an 18thC Lewes House in Sussex. 

        Joachim Reinhard, Danish writer, unwisely attacks Georg Brandes, who retaliates in his

                     brother’s newspaper, naming him as a ‘comrade-in-arms’ of Martin Kok – implying he

                     was homosexual.  The attacks spread & Reinhard emigrates to the US.

1889-90      Frederick Rolfe in Rome becomes acquainted with the work of the ‘Arcadian’ photographers

                             Wilhelm von Gloeden & Guglielmo Plüschow, whom he tried to emulate.

1889-90      Winter.  Edward Carpenter meets George Merrill (20) for the first time – on a train.

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.