Difference between revisions of "Jonathan Ned Katz: Francis Davis Millet and Charles Warren Stoddard, 1874-1912"
Line 278: | Line 278: | ||
Spooning reminded Millet that he had had "a squaring up" with Charlotte | Spooning reminded Millet that he had had "a squaring up" with Charlotte | ||
("Donny") Adams, the eighteen-year-old daughter of their good | ("Donny") Adams, the eighteen-year-old daughter of their good | ||
− | friends. Millet had told Donny "exactly what I thought of her going off | + | friends. Millet had told Donny "exactly what I thought of her going off with one fellow and coming home with another." In response, she had |
− | |||
− | |||
− | with one fellow and coming home with another." In response, she had | ||
tried to "put it all on to me:' saying "I alone was touchy." But Millet had | tried to "put it all on to me:' saying "I alone was touchy." But Millet had | ||
told her Stoddard agreed with his criticism, "and then she seemed very | told her Stoddard agreed with his criticism, "and then she seemed very | ||
Line 291: | Line 288: | ||
by a woman. Criticizing Donny's inconstancy in ditching one | by a woman. Criticizing Donny's inconstancy in ditching one | ||
man for another, Millet may have applied to her the same standard to | man for another, Millet may have applied to her the same standard to | ||
− | which he held himself He was certainly constant in his romantic devotion | + | which he held himself. He was certainly constant in his romantic devotion |
to Stoddard, despite the journalist's inconstancy. Stoddard, off with | to Stoddard, despite the journalist's inconstancy. Stoddard, off with | ||
Monte Cristo and Robert William Jones, clearly applied a less rigid rule | Monte Cristo and Robert William Jones, clearly applied a less rigid rule | ||
Line 310: | Line 307: | ||
each other: "My dear old Boy, I miss you more than you do me." He wondered | each other: "My dear old Boy, I miss you more than you do me." He wondered | ||
"constantly--after dark;' he confessed, "why should one go and | "constantly--after dark;' he confessed, "why should one go and | ||
− | the other stay. It is rough on the one who remains"-a repeated refrain. | + | the other stay. It is rough on the one who remains"--a repeated refrain. |
"Harry" (another dog) "sends a wave of her tail and a gentle swagger | "Harry" (another dog) "sends a wave of her tail and a gentle swagger | ||
− | of her body"-"Charles/Venus" was not the only mixed-sex dog name. | + | of her body"--"Charles/Venus" was not the only mixed-sex dog name. |
"Tom;' Millet added, "sends you his brightest smile and Venus wags his | "Tom;' Millet added, "sends you his brightest smile and Venus wags his | ||
aimless tail in greeting." | aimless tail in greeting." | ||
Line 389: | Line 386: | ||
the prayer." | the prayer." | ||
− | Stoddard was still much on Millet's mind, however: The Adamses | + | |
+ | Stoddard was still much on Millet's mind, however: The Adamses "say I am always thinking of you,"' and Millet did not deny it. But Mr. and | ||
+ | Mrs. Adams probably did not understand Millet's infatuation as sexual. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Earlier, Millet and Stoddard had conspired with Donny Adams for her | ||
+ | to meet a young woman she idolized from afar, Julia ("Dudee") Fletcher, | ||
+ | an androgynous, aspiring writer (later, the author of the noveI Kismet, the | ||
+ | source of the musical). But Donny had decided that she was afraid to | ||
+ | meet Dudee at home-to "beard the lion in his den," as Millet put it. (Julia, | ||
+ | the lion, is an intriguing, sex-mixed metaphor). So Millet had | ||
+ | arranged to introduce Donny to Dudee on some neutral ground, and, he | ||
+ | reported, "Donny at last has met her idol!!" He hoped that Donny "has | ||
+ | not created too exalted an ideal." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | The Donny/Dudee introduction, in | ||
+ | fact, proved a bust. A few weeks later Millet reported to Stoddard that | ||
+ | Donny "has given up the study of girls and is going to devote herself to | ||
+ | the law. A profitable change, I think." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | What, exactly, "the study of girls" meant to Donny is not clear. But | ||
+ | Donny's "interest in girls" and in men again suggests a historical fluidity | ||
+ | of libido that only later hardens into an exclusive, either/or devotion to | ||
+ | girls or boys. In 1875, neither Millet, Stoddard, nor Donny seem surprised | ||
+ | at her shift in interest from men to women. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Millet ended this letter playfully, sending Stoddard "more than the | ||
+ | sum total of the whole with a sandwich of love between the slices," bidding | ||
+ | him, "Eat & be happy." Millet's love sandwich echoed Stoddard's | ||
+ | earlier linking of food and sensual satisfaction. "Yours with all my heart;' | ||
+ | Millet signed himself. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ==Millet to Stoddard: June 10, 1875== | ||
+ | But Millet's needy heart now sometimes bled for his wandering loved | ||
+ | one. A note that the artist wrote the next day concluded with a drawing | ||
+ | of a heart dripping blood, an arrow through it, and the slang query "How | ||
+ | high is that?"--meaning "What do you think of that?" | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ==Millet to Stoddard: June 18, 1875== | ||
+ | A few weeks later, however, on June 18, Millet was telling Stoddard: | ||
+ | "You can't imagine what pleasure I take in anticipating our trip in Belgium | ||
+ | and Holland. Don't fail to come, old chummeke, and we'll have a | ||
+ | busting time." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | But, true to Millet's anxious premonition, his slippery, intimacy-shy | ||
+ | friend failed to appear in Belgium. And, by the summer of 1875, Millet | ||
+ | had run out of money and had returned to America, writing to Stoddard, | ||
+ | first from Boston, then from his parents' home in East Bridgewater, | ||
+ | Massachusetts, where he had a studio. In the States, Millet sought writing | ||
+ | and illustration work as a journalist, as well as commissions for | ||
+ | painted portraits. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ==Millet to Stoddard: August 13, 1875== | ||
+ | In Massachusetts, Millet reported on August 13, he was "bored to | ||
+ | death" and felt himself "the prey of a thousand vulturous individuals who suck the vitality out of me in ten thousand different ways." This draining | ||
+ | of his vitality was the exact opposite of the vitality provided by Stoddard's | ||
+ | "magnetism;' and Millet's sucking metaphor may hint again at an aspect | ||
+ | of their energy interchange. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | ==Millet to Stoddard: August 15, 1875== | ||
+ | A letter from Stoddard had "brought an odor of the old country with | ||
+ | it that was refreshing in this desert," a gloomy Millet reported on August | ||
+ | 15, from East Bridgewater, a place he detested: "If there ever was a | ||
+ | soul killing place this is it. Crowds of people ... swoop down upon me | ||
+ | and bore me to death." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | If Stoddard, his "dear old fellow;' was with him, Millet imagined, "we | ||
+ | could be happy a few months and do some good work." Only his own | ||
+ | death, or his father's, could keep him in America, Millet declared dramatically, adding, "I hope for a long life for both of us yet." Intimations of mortality. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | "You know that I only feel whole when you are with me;' Millet now | ||
+ | confessed, admitting for the first time his full, profound need for Stoddard. | ||
+ | Millet then referred, again, to Stoddard's "magnetism of the soul | ||
+ | that can not be explained and had better not be analyzed." Close analysis | ||
+ | of Stoddard's magnetism was dangerous for Millet. Stoddard's magnetic | ||
+ | attraction led Millet to a humiliating pursuit of an unavailable beloved, | ||
+ | perhaps even a loss of self. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | His and Stoddard's "Venetian experience is unique;' declared Millet, | ||
+ | summing up their former romance at its height. He hoped for as good an | ||
+ | experience in the future, "if not a similar one." He still seemed to be expecting | ||
+ | a similar future intimacy with Stoddard, whom he urged to join | ||
+ | him on his travels through Europe (and, implicitly, through life): "We | ||
+ | can do the world if you keep up your courage." | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | Millet ordered Stoddard, jokingly, to "Tell Mrs Swoon" (Mrs. Adams, | ||
+ | no doubt) that he would send his photograph. But, in the meantime, he | ||
+ | enclosed for Stoddard "a crumpled proof of one as Juliette." The faded | ||
+ | proof of Millet in a long, curly, blond wig is still enclosed in his letter. | ||
+ | Playing with sex inversions was not, among these friends, limited to | ||
+ | dogs' names. | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | <ADD PHOTO OF MILLET AS JULIET> | ||
+ | |||
+ | Stoddard had written earlier that if Millet did not return to Europe | ||
+ | soon, he would find a new "boy"--his tease simultaneously expressed desire | ||
+ | for Millet and suggested that he was replaceable. Once again (as documented by historians), "boy" | ||
+ | and "man" name the partners in a nineteenth-century intimacy of males, | ||
+ | though, in this case, the actual age difference was slight. Millet was Stoddard's | ||
+ | "boy" only metaphorically, and temporarily, for the younger Millet | ||
+ | usually acted the active, pursuing "man," the older Stoddard, the hard-to-get "boy." | ||
− | up to page | + | xxxxxxxx |
+ | up to page 213 | ||
==Notes== | ==Notes== |
Revision as of 13:34, 25 January 2012
Empty Chair, Empty Bed, Empty House
Adapted without the source citations from Jonathan Ned Katz's book Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality.
By 1874, the American travel journalist Charles Warren Stoddard had
given up on the South Seas, the site of earlier sensual adventures recorded coyly coded form in published articles. He was now pursuing his erotic destiny in Italy.[1]
There
in romantic, legendary Venice at the end of the year, "a young man quietly
joined me" in a box at the opera during intermission, Stoddard recalled.
"We looked at each other and were acquainted in a minute. Some
people understand one anotherer at sight, and don't have to try, either."
Stoddard's recollection of this meeting was published in Boston's National Magazine
in 1906.
Stoddard's new friend was the American artist Francis Davis Millet.
The two had heard of each other, but never met. Stoddard was thirty-one
in 1874, and Millet was twenty-eight.
During the Civil War, Millet's father,
a Massachusetts doctor, had served as a Union army surgeon, and in
1864, the eighteen-year-old Frank Millet had enlisted as a private, serving
first as a drummer boy and then as a surgeon's assistant. Young Millet
graduated from Harvard in 1869, with a master's degree in modern
languages and literature. While working as a journalist on Boston newspapers,
he learned lithography and earned money enough to enroll in
1871 in the Royal Academy, Antwerp. There, unlike anyone before him,
he won all the art prizes the school offered and was officially hailed by the
king of Belgium. As secretary of the Massachusetts commission to the Vienna
exposition in 1873, Millet formed a friendship with the American
Charles Francis Adams, and then traveled through Turkey, Romania,
Greece, Hungary, and Italy, finally settling in Venice to paint.
At the opera, as Stoddard recalled, Millet immediately asked, "Where
are you going to spend the Winter?" He then invited Stoddard to live in
his eight-room rented house. "Why not come and take one of those
rooms?" the painter offered, "I'll look after the domestic affairs" -- is this
a Stoddard double entendre?
Stoddard accepted Millet's invitation,
recalling that they became "almost immediately very much better
acquainted." Did Stoddard go home with Millet that night?
The two lived together during the winter of 1874-75, though Stoddard
did not take one of the extra rooms. Millet's romantic letters to Stoddard
indicate that the men shared a bed in an attic room overlooking the
Lagoon, Grand Canal, and Public Garden.
Lack of space did not explain
this bed sharing, and Stoddard's earlier and later sexual liaisons with men,
his written essays and memoirs, and Millet's letters to Stoddard, all
strongly suggest that their intimacy found active affectionate and erotic
expressIon.
Though Stoddard's erotic interests seem to have focused exclusively
on men, Millet's were more fluid. In the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, Millet's psychic configuration was probably the more common,
Stoddard's exclusive interest in men the less usual. In any case, the ranging
of Millet's erotic interest between men and women was not then understood
as "bisexual", a mix of "homo" and "hetero." The hetero-homo division has not yet been invented.
Another occupant of the house was Giovanni, whom Stoddard called
"our gondolier, cook, chambermaid and errand-boy." His use of "maid"
and "boy" hint at gender doubling, and, perhaps, at sexual nonconformity.
(Giovanni's last name, not mentioned, is lost to history, typical in
masters' accounts of servants.)
That winter, Millet taught Giovanni to
prepare two classic New England dishes, baked beans and fish balls, and
during the cold months, Stoddard recalled, he and Millet dined Massachusetts
style in their warm Italian kitchen.
From the window of this kitchen in warmer weather, Stoddard recalled,
they watched "the supple figures of half-nude artisans" working in
an adjoining shipyard. It was "no wonder that we lingered over our meals
there," said Stoddard, without explaining that lingering. Visual, alimentary, and erotic
pleasures are repeatedly linked in Stoddard's and Millet's writings, as we
will see.
During the daytime, Millet painted in their home's courtyard while
Stoddard dozed, smoked, and wrote columns about Venice and other
Italian cities for the San Francisco Chronicle. They dined early and took
gondola rides at sunset.
In a newspaper column that Stoddard published
early in his relationship with Millet, the journalist wrote of "spoons" with
"my fair" (an unnamed woman) in a gondola's covered "lovers' cabin," and
of "her memory of a certain memorable sunset-but that is between us
two!" Stoddard here changed the sex of his fair one when discussing
"spooning" (kissing) in his published writing. Walt Whitman also employed the literary subterfuge, changing the sex of the male who inspired a poem to a female in the final, published version.
Touring Italy: February 1875
In February 1875, Stoddard, seeking new cities to write about for the Chronicle, made a three-week tour of northern Italy, revising these memoirs twelve years later for the Catholic magazine Ave Maria, published at Notre Dame University. Stoddard wrote that his unnamed painter friend accompanied him as guide and "companion-in-arms," a punning name for his bed mate--the companion in his arms. This definitely intended pun allowed Stoddard to imply more about this companionship than he could say directly. A variety of other, barely coded references lace Stoddard's writing with allusions to eros between men.
In Padua, for example, Stoddard wrote that he and his companion were
struck by views of "lovely churches and the tombs of saints and hosts of college boys." Casually including "hosts of college boys" among the
"lovely" religious sights of Padua, and substituting "hosts of ... boys" for
the proverbial "angels," Stoddard's sacrilege-threatening run-on sentence
suggested that, to these two tourists, at least, the boys looked heavenly.
In another case, on the train to Florence, Stoddard and his companion
noticed a tall "fellow who had just parted with his friend" at a station. As
"soon as they had kissed each other on both cheeks -- a custom of the
country;' Stoddard explained to nonkissing American men, the traveler
was "hoisted into our compartment." But "no sooner did the train move
off, than he was overcome, and, giving way to his emotion, he lifted up
his voice like a trumpeter;' filling the car with "lamentations." For half an
hour "he bellowed lustily, but no one seemed in the least disconcerted at
this monstrous show of feeling; doubtless each in his turn had been similarly affected."
Suggesting, slyly, that bellowing "lustily" was common among parting
men friends and represented the expression of a deep, intense, and by
no means unusual feeling, Stoddard pointed to a ubiquitous male eros,
not one limited to men of a special, unique, man-loving temperament.
Typically keeping a sharp eye out for the varieties of physically expressed
attachment between males, he also invoked Walt Whitman's poem on the
tender parting of men friends on a pier: "The one to remain hung on the
other's neck and passionately kiss'd him, / While the one to depart tightly
prest the one to remain in his arms." That poem, and Stoddard's essay,
suggest that parting provided, in the nineteenth century, a public occasion
for the physical expression of intense love between men, a custom
that had special resonance for men, like Stoddard, attracted to men.
Among the statues that Stoddard admired in Florence were "The
Wrestlers, tied up in a double-bow of monstrous muscles"- another culturally
sanctioned icon of physical contact between, in this case, scantily
clad men.
In Genoa, Stoddard recalled seeing a "captivating" painting of the
"lovely martyr" St. Sebastian, a "nude torso" of "a youth as beautiful as
Narcissus"--yet another classic, undressed male image suffused with
eros. The "sensuous element predominates;' in this sculpture, said Stoddard,
and "even the blood-stains cannot disfigure the exquisite lustre of
the flesh."
In Sienna, Stoddard recorded, he and his companion-in-arms slept in
a "great double bed ... so white and plump it looked quite like a gigantic
frosted cake-and we were happy." The last phrase directly echoes
Stoddard's favorite Whitman Calamus poem in which a man's friend lies
"sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night" - "and that night I was happy. Sleeping happily with Millet in that cake/bed, Stoddard
again linked food and bodily pleasure.
Back in Venice, Spring 1875
Back in their Venice home in spring 1875, Stoddard recalled one day seeing "a tall, slender and exceedingly elegant figure approaching languidly."
A. A. Anderson
This second American artist, A. A. Anderson, appeared one Sunday at Millet's wearing a "long black cloak of Byronic mold," one corner of which was "carelessly thrown back over his arm, displaying a lining of cardinal satin." The costume was enhanced by a gold-threaded, damask scarf and a broad-brimmed hat with tassels. In Stoddard's published memoirs, identifying Anderson only as "Monte Cristo," the journalist recalled the artist's "uncommonly comely face of the oriental--oval and almond- eyed type. Entranced by the "glamor" surrounding Monte Cristo, Stoddard soon passed whole days "drifting with him" in his gondola, or walking ashore.
Invited to dinner by Monte Cristo, Stoddard and his friend (Millet)
found Monte occupying the suite of a "royal princess, it was so ample and
so richy furnished. (Monte was a "princess,"' Stoddard hints.) Funded
by an inheritance from dad, Monte had earlier bought a steam yacht and
cruised with an equally rich male friend to Egypt, then given the yacht
away to an Arab potentate. Later, while Stoddard was visiting Paris, he
found himself at once in the "embrace of Monte Cristo," recalling: "That
night was Arabian, and no mistake!" Stoddard's reference to The Arabian Nights)
a classic text including man-love scenes, also invoked a western mystique of "oriental" sex.
To England and Robert William Jones
After the beautiful Anderson left Venice, Stoddard, the perennial rover, found it impossible to settle down any longer in the comfortable, loving domesticity offered by Millet. The journalist may also have needed new sights to inspire the travel writing that supported him. He therefore set off for Chester, England, to see Robert William Jones, a fellow with whom, a year earlier, he had shared a brief encounter and who had since been sending him passionate letters.
Stoddard's flight, after living with
Millet for about six months, marked a new phase in their relationship.
Millet now became the devoted pursuer, Stoddard the ambivalent pursued.
Millet to Stoddard, May 10, 1875
From Venice, Millet wrote affectionately to Stoddard on May 10, 1875, calling him "Dear Old Chummeke"--explaining, "I call you chummeke," the "diminutive of chum,"' because "you are already 'chum' but have never been chummeke before. Flemish you know." "Chum" and its variations constituted a common, positive name among nineteenth-century male intimates, one of the terms by which they affirmed the special character of their tie.
Claiming he had not much to say because he "let out" so much in his
first letter (not extant, significantly and unfortunately) Millet reported
that he had a new pet. He had told their mutual friends, the Adamses, that
he had "named the new dog Charles Warren Stoddard Venus, though "it
wasn't that kind of a dog" (not, that is, a dog of mixed, ambiguous sex). To Stoddard, Millet certainly referred to Stoddard's large admixture of
the feminine and perhaps to Stoddard's sexual intrest in men. To the
Adamses, Millet was probably perceived to refer only to Stoddard's effeminacy.
The dog's name "was not a question of sex,"' Millet had stressed to the
Adamses, "but of appropriateness."
The dog's-and Stoddard's-ambiguous masculinity had obviously
been the subject of some lighthearted banter between Millet and the
Adamses. But Millet's reference to Stoddard's effeminacy probably did not
then bring erotic infractions to this Adams family's mind, nor is it likely to
have suggested to them the sexual aspect of the relationship between these
men. Gender deviance and erotic nonconformity were not yet linked as
they would be after the installation of homosex and heterosex.
Another dog, Tom, "sleeps in your place now and fills it all up, that is,
the material space he occupies, crowding me out of bed very offen." Stoddard's
body was absent, but his spirit lingered on.
"Miss you?" Millet asked. He answered: "Bet your life. Put yourself in
my place. It isn't the one who goes away who misses, it is the one who
stays. Empty chair, empty bed, empty house." Millet's desire for Stoddard's
bodily presence is palpable in his words.
"So, my dear old cuss;' Millet ended warmly, "with lots of love I am
thine -- as you need not be told." He had obviously declared his love many times earlier.
Millet to Stoddard, May 26, 1875
He was working on a painting that called for two boy models, "posing two small cusses--the naked ones-together,"' Millet wrote to Stoddard on May 26 (again, the talk was of nude male flesh). But the hot, dustladen, dry wind of Venice, lightning flashes, and "the mercurial little cusses" made him feel that he had "nearly ruined what good there was on the canvas." Millet wished Stoddard was present to "make me feel that I have not done so awfully bad work today."
"No gossip to speak of," Millet reported, except that a mutual male
friend "does no work but spoons with Miss Kelley. "Spoon" appeared repeatedly
in Millet's letters and in Stoddard's published journalism, with
varying degrees of romantic and sexual intimation.
Spooning reminded Millet that he had had "a squaring up" with Charlotte
("Donny") Adams, the eighteen-year-old daughter of their good
friends. Millet had told Donny "exactly what I thought of her going off with one fellow and coming home with another." In response, she had
tried to "put it all on to me:' saying "I alone was touchy." But Millet had
told her Stoddard agreed with his criticism, "and then she seemed very
anxious to beg my pardon etc. which was not granted."
Millet's high-handed objection to what he considered Donny's breach
of dating etiquette shows him identifying with a man done wrong, supposedly,
by a woman. Criticizing Donny's inconstancy in ditching one
man for another, Millet may have applied to her the same standard to
which he held himself. He was certainly constant in his romantic devotion
to Stoddard, despite the journalist's inconstancy. Stoddard, off with
Monte Cristo and Robert William Jones, clearly applied a less rigid rule
to his own liaisons.
Donny Adams had ended this confrontation by reporting one of her
men friends' suggestions: Millet was gaining weight that winter "because
I liked her and did not care to see another fellow go with her." Donny and
her man friend did not perceive that Millet's romantic-erotic interest was
focused then on Stoddard. Men's erotic romances with men were invisible
because at this time in the public consciousness, there was only one
kind of erotic-romantic attraction-toward the other, different sex.
Millet asked Stoddard to meet him in Belgium in July. Then, for the
first time in his letters, he acknowledged the imbalance in their need for
each other: "My dear old Boy, I miss you more than you do me." He wondered
"constantly--after dark;' he confessed, "why should one go and
the other stay. It is rough on the one who remains"--a repeated refrain.
"Harry" (another dog) "sends a wave of her tail and a gentle swagger
of her body"--"Charles/Venus" was not the only mixed-sex dog name.
"Tom;' Millet added, "sends you his brightest smile and Venus wags his
aimless tail in greeting."
Millet to Stoddard: May 30, 1875
He had not "passed one good night" since they parted, Millet admitted to Stoddard on May 30, and he was "completely played out from want of sleep and rest." He had not mentioned it before, "and I don't dare tell you why I haven't."
What was it, exactly, that Millet dared not say? Was ~ simply that he
missed Stoddard too much and was depressed? Or did he believe, possibly,
that he had exhausted himself: in Stoddard's absence, from voluntary
or involuntary seminal emissions? Or, did Millet believe, perhaps, that
he received from Stoddard's physical presence some spiritual, or material,
vitality-enhancing substance? We cannot know for sure. But other evidence
that we will consider supports a sexual interpretation.
Whatever Millet did not say, he was also probably worrying again
about their unequal need for each other and about coming on too strong to Stoddard. We have already heard Stoddard's reference to two men
friends' "monstrous show of feeling." Displays of emotion were evidently
threatening, as well as intriguing, to Stoddard.
Millet had supposed for a while that it "was our old attic chamber that
made me restless."' and he had ordered Giovanni to move his bed elsewhere
in the house. He had not "been into our attic room since and don't
intend to go"--strong feelings about their old bedroom. But the "change
of room does not cure me."
"What is the matter?" asked Millet, struggling to understand the
source of his distress: "I know I miss you, my old chummeke, but isn't it
reasonable that my other self misses you still more and cant let me sleep
because he wants your magnetism! I think it must be so."
Millet was two-sided, he suggested, and one of his sides lacked the vital
force provided by Stoddard's physical, bodily presence. "Magnetism"
was a common nineteenth-century name for an individual's power to attract,
his force of personality, and his energy.
Was it possible that Millet missed, specifically, the vivifying ingestion
of Stoddard's spirit via oral sex? This is not as far-fetched as it may sound.
Three years after Millet wrote to Stoddard, in 1878, Dr. Mary Walker
warned readers of her popular medical manual not to believe the common
folklore that women's ingestion of men's semen, and men's ingestion
of women's vaginal secretions, promoted health, life, and beauty. The benefits of an older man ingesting a younger man's semen
was actually extolled by the English sex reformer Edward Carpenter to an
American visitor (Gavin Arthur) with whom he tested the practice in the early twentieth
century.
Mrs. Adams "is spooney on you, you know," Millet told Stoddard. But
the roaming Stoddard was not thinking about Mrs. Adams, however
affectionate their relationship. At long last, Stoddard admitted that he
missed Millet, who was extremely pleased to hear it: "Bet your life, dear
Boy, that it soothes me to learn that I am not the only one who misses
his companion in arms." ("Companion-in-arms" appears here, again, as
these bedfellows' private, affectionate name for each other.)
Millet sent Stoddard "much love," declaring himself "yours to put
your finger on" -- he was still available for the taking. Millet played Penelope,
stay-at-home wife, to Stoddard's wandering Odysseus.
Millet to Stoddard: June 9, 1875
"Since I got your last letter;' Millet reported on June 9, "I have passed two good nights dreamless and waking only in the morning." Reassured of Stoddard's love, he slept: "I reckon it was the influence of the letter, or the prayer."
Stoddard was still much on Millet's mind, however: The Adamses "say I am always thinking of you,"' and Millet did not deny it. But Mr. and
Mrs. Adams probably did not understand Millet's infatuation as sexual.
Earlier, Millet and Stoddard had conspired with Donny Adams for her
to meet a young woman she idolized from afar, Julia ("Dudee") Fletcher,
an androgynous, aspiring writer (later, the author of the noveI Kismet, the
source of the musical). But Donny had decided that she was afraid to
meet Dudee at home-to "beard the lion in his den," as Millet put it. (Julia,
the lion, is an intriguing, sex-mixed metaphor). So Millet had
arranged to introduce Donny to Dudee on some neutral ground, and, he
reported, "Donny at last has met her idol!!" He hoped that Donny "has
not created too exalted an ideal."
The Donny/Dudee introduction, in
fact, proved a bust. A few weeks later Millet reported to Stoddard that
Donny "has given up the study of girls and is going to devote herself to
the law. A profitable change, I think."
What, exactly, "the study of girls" meant to Donny is not clear. But
Donny's "interest in girls" and in men again suggests a historical fluidity
of libido that only later hardens into an exclusive, either/or devotion to
girls or boys. In 1875, neither Millet, Stoddard, nor Donny seem surprised
at her shift in interest from men to women.
Millet ended this letter playfully, sending Stoddard "more than the
sum total of the whole with a sandwich of love between the slices," bidding
him, "Eat & be happy." Millet's love sandwich echoed Stoddard's
earlier linking of food and sensual satisfaction. "Yours with all my heart;'
Millet signed himself.
Millet to Stoddard: June 10, 1875
But Millet's needy heart now sometimes bled for his wandering loved one. A note that the artist wrote the next day concluded with a drawing of a heart dripping blood, an arrow through it, and the slang query "How high is that?"--meaning "What do you think of that?"
Millet to Stoddard: June 18, 1875
A few weeks later, however, on June 18, Millet was telling Stoddard: "You can't imagine what pleasure I take in anticipating our trip in Belgium and Holland. Don't fail to come, old chummeke, and we'll have a busting time."
But, true to Millet's anxious premonition, his slippery, intimacy-shy
friend failed to appear in Belgium. And, by the summer of 1875, Millet
had run out of money and had returned to America, writing to Stoddard,
first from Boston, then from his parents' home in East Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, where he had a studio. In the States, Millet sought writing
and illustration work as a journalist, as well as commissions for
painted portraits.
Millet to Stoddard: August 13, 1875
In Massachusetts, Millet reported on August 13, he was "bored to death" and felt himself "the prey of a thousand vulturous individuals who suck the vitality out of me in ten thousand different ways." This draining of his vitality was the exact opposite of the vitality provided by Stoddard's "magnetism;' and Millet's sucking metaphor may hint again at an aspect of their energy interchange.
Millet to Stoddard: August 15, 1875
A letter from Stoddard had "brought an odor of the old country with it that was refreshing in this desert," a gloomy Millet reported on August 15, from East Bridgewater, a place he detested: "If there ever was a soul killing place this is it. Crowds of people ... swoop down upon me and bore me to death."
If Stoddard, his "dear old fellow;' was with him, Millet imagined, "we
could be happy a few months and do some good work." Only his own
death, or his father's, could keep him in America, Millet declared dramatically, adding, "I hope for a long life for both of us yet." Intimations of mortality.
"You know that I only feel whole when you are with me;' Millet now
confessed, admitting for the first time his full, profound need for Stoddard.
Millet then referred, again, to Stoddard's "magnetism of the soul
that can not be explained and had better not be analyzed." Close analysis
of Stoddard's magnetism was dangerous for Millet. Stoddard's magnetic
attraction led Millet to a humiliating pursuit of an unavailable beloved,
perhaps even a loss of self.
His and Stoddard's "Venetian experience is unique;' declared Millet,
summing up their former romance at its height. He hoped for as good an
experience in the future, "if not a similar one." He still seemed to be expecting
a similar future intimacy with Stoddard, whom he urged to join
him on his travels through Europe (and, implicitly, through life): "We
can do the world if you keep up your courage."
Millet ordered Stoddard, jokingly, to "Tell Mrs Swoon" (Mrs. Adams,
no doubt) that he would send his photograph. But, in the meantime, he
enclosed for Stoddard "a crumpled proof of one as Juliette." The faded
proof of Millet in a long, curly, blond wig is still enclosed in his letter.
Playing with sex inversions was not, among these friends, limited to
dogs' names.
<ADD PHOTO OF MILLET AS JULIET>
Stoddard had written earlier that if Millet did not return to Europe soon, he would find a new "boy"--his tease simultaneously expressed desire for Millet and suggested that he was replaceable. Once again (as documented by historians), "boy" and "man" name the partners in a nineteenth-century intimacy of males, though, in this case, the actual age difference was slight. Millet was Stoddard's "boy" only metaphorically, and temporarily, for the younger Millet usually acted the active, pursuing "man," the older Stoddard, the hard-to-get "boy."
xxxxxxxx
up to page 213
Notes
- ↑ Ada[ted and republished on OutHistory without the original backnote citations from Jonathan Ned Katz's "Empty Chair, Empty Bed, Empty House", Chapter 14, in Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pages 202-219.