Whitman, Symonds, Carpenter: "In paths untrodden," 1859-1924

Walt Whitman

by Jonathan Ned Katz. Copyright (c) by Jonathan Ned Katz. All rights reserved.

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Although Whitman scholars have customarily deemphasized the celebratory character of his poems of male-male love and dismissed his sexual politics as totally deluded, in the perspective of homosexual emancipation history, Whitman emerges as a founding father, Besides his importance as a poet, the evidence demonstrates Whitman's direct and powerful influence on the work of the two major, early English political philosophers of homosexual liberation, John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter-evidence presented in parallel chronological surveys. Whitman's place within Gay history, especially as an influence on the early homosexual emancipation movement, has not been carefully explored. When the many biographical and analytical works on the American poet are finally surveyed in this historical perspective and in detail; their truly scandalous suppression or bigoted interpretation of Whitman's homosexuality will emerge with startling clarity and force. Until then, the following survey of some major documents is intended to suggest the initiatory, pivotal role of Whitman, despite his own evasions and even outright disavowal, as a pioneer in the history of the homosexual resistance.

Happily for the history of Gay liberation, Walt Whitman precisely dates his resolution “To celebrate the need of comrades": on "afternoon" in September 1859. The poem recording this resolution first appears in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, as number 1 in the new “Calamus" section, whose theme is male-male love:

IN paths untrodden,

In the growth by. margins of pond-waters,

Escaped from the life that exhibits itself,

From all the standards hitherto published-horn the pleasures,

profits, conformities,

Which too long I was offering to feed to my Soul;

Clear to me now, standards not yet published-dear to me that

my Soul,

That the Soul of the man X speak for, feeds, rejoices only in

comrades;

Here, by myself, away from the clank of the world,

Tallying and talked to here by tongues aromatic,

No longer abashed-for in this secluded spot I can respond as I

would not dare elsewhere,

Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet contains all

the rest,

Resolved to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment,

Projecting them along that substantial life,

Bequeathing, hence, types of athletic love, *

Afternoon, this delicious Ninth Month, in my forty-first year,

I proceed, for all who are, or have been, young men,

To tell the secret of my nights and days,

To celebrate the need of comrades.

Poem number 4 of the same edition unequivocally identifies the symbolic meaning of thalamus, o grass- or rushlike plant growing around the edges of ponds. "Henceforth," says Whitman, this calamus plant shall "be the token of comrades," because at such a pond "I last saw him that tenderly loves me-and returns again, never to separate from me." In the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), Whitman also refers to calamus or "sweet-flag" (another common name for the same plant), using it explicitly as a phallic symbol. The "Calamus" poems ore thus unambiguously identified with the love of males for males, and this love is explicitly erotic. The poems themselves emphasize the physical, as well as emotional, expression of male intimacy. Whitman's "Calamus" poems evoke a great variety of those deep feelings connected with love-in particular, the love of males for males, expressed in the most physical of terms. These feelings range from the deepest despair to the most positive, passionate love.

In the first verse of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, "Proto-Leaf," Whitman states his poetic program: among his subjects he will write of "sexual organs and ads!"-describing them "with courageous clear voice," proving them "illustrious!' What he immediately adds that he "will sing the song of companionship"-he will show alone will unify the states-those states which "are to found their own ideal of manly love, indicating it in me." He continues:

I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were

threatening to consume me,

I will lift what has too long kept down those smoldering fires,

I will give them complete abandonment,

I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,

(For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and

joy?

And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)

In his verse, Whitman begins to formulate, in poetic terms, a conception of sexual politics. "Calamus" poem number 5 emphasizes the social, unifying function of male comradeship.

STATES!

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?

By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?

Away!

I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the form of courts and arms,

These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held

together.

. . . . . . . . .

There shall from me be a new friendship-It shall be called after

my name,

It shall circulate through The States, indifferent of place, I

It shall twist and intertwist them through and around each other-

Compact shall they be, showing new signs,

Affection shall solve every one of the problems of freedom,

Those who love each other shall be invincible…

. . . . . . . . .

It shall be customary in all directions, in the houses and streets,

to see manly affection,

The departing brother or friend shall salute the remaining brother

or friend with a kiss.

There shall be innovations,

There shall be countless linked hands.

. . . . . . . . .

These shall be masters of the world under a new power,

They shall laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the

world.

. . . . . . . . .

These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron,

I, extatic, O partners! O lands! henceforth with the

love of lovers tie you.

In poem 35 Whitman says:

I believe the main purport of These States is to found a

superb friendship, exalt4 previously unknown,

Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting,

latent in all men.

"I wish to infuse myself among you,” says Whitman, "till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand”.

Although Whitman's sexual politics, as expressed in these poems of 1860, was later somewhat elaborated in prose, his views always retained a certain vagueness. Nevertheless, Whitman's writings are remarkable for suggesting, at an early date, Intimate connections between homosexual emancipation and the full development of democracy, including a general sexual and human liberation. While some of Whitman's verses belong among the world's most beautiful love lyrics, his clear, spare, passionate, poems of male-male love also contain the seeds of a sexual politics whose far-reaching implications are only becoming clear with the recent development of the women's and Gay liberation movements and related theoretical analyses.

John Addington Symonds

John Addington Symonds, born in 1840, the son of a well-to-do physician, would become a historian of Renaissance Italy and classical Greece, a literary scholar, critic, essayist, poet, translator, and biographer, as well as one of the two major English pioneers of homosexual emancipation.

In 1858, the eighteen-year-old Symonds first saw and fell in love with the fifteen year-old Willie Dyer-one April Sunday-in church on his Easter holidays. To this meeting, and the relationship that followed, Symnonds later dated his "birth" (what might now be called his "coming out”), the conscious realization of his homosexuality. In 1864, Symnonds married Janet Catharine North, and the first of their three daughters arrived the following year. Also in 1865, the twenty-five-year-old Symonds first heard Walt Whitman's poems read aloud to him by a friend. Symonds was immediately overwhelmed and fascinated by the poet's bold expression of male-male love, and he began a lifelong inquiry into the character and writings of that American, especially into the precise meaning and intent of his "Calamus" series.

On April 8, 1867, Symonds writes a close friend and confidant, Henry Graham Dakyns, that he is going to see Moncure D. Conway, American Unitarian clergyman and militant abolitionist, then traveling in Europe. Conway had published an article on Whitman in an English periodical, and Symonds says:

I shall not omit to ask him questions about the substance of Calamus as adroitly as I can with a view to hearing what nidus [nest] for it there is actually in America.

On April 15, Symonds reports that he and Conway had liked each other immediately; Conway had given Symonds an edition of Whitman's poetry-sent by Whitman "to some worthy proselyte." But Conway, says Symonds remained evasive:

I c[oul]d not get him to say anything explicit about Calamus. This, I think means that Calamus is really very important & that Conway refuses to talk it over with a stranger. He cannot be oblivious of its plainer meanings.

Symonds was determined to question Conway mare closely if he ever saw him again. Symonds's efforts to obtain proof of Whitman's exact meaning would continue for a quarter of a century.

In 1871, Whitman published an essay, "Democratic Vistas," expanding in prose on the social implications of male-male love, developing his idea of sexual politics. Leaping speculatively ahead in time, Whitman optimistically suggests that even before the bicentennial arrives in 1976, "much that is now undream'd of, we might then see established…"

Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachment of man to man-which, hard to define, underlies the lessons and ideals of the profound saviours of every land and age, and which seems to promise, when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated and recognized in manners and literature, the most substantial hope and safety of the future of these States, will then be fully express'd.

In a note Whitman adds:

It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence of that fervid comradeship, (the adhesive love [between males], at least rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it,) that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not follow my inferences: but I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carried to degrees hitherto unknown-not only giving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself.

That same year on October 7, 1871, Symonds writes his first letter to Whitman enclosing his poem titled "Love and Death," on heroism inspired by an intimate friendship between hales-expressing in an indirect way his burning interest in the meaning of "Calamus":

My dear Sir.

When a man has ventured to dedicate his work to another without authority or permission, I think that he is bound to make confession of the liberty be has taken. This must be my excuse for sending to you the crude poem in wh[ich] you may perchance detect some echo, faint & feeble, of your Ca1amus.-As I have put pen to paper I cannot refrain from saying that since the time when I first took up Leaves of Grass in a friend's rooms* at Trinity College Cambridge six years ago till now, your poems have been my constant companions… I have found in them pure air and health-the free breath of the world-when often cramped by illness and the cares of life. What one man can do by communicating to those he loves the treasure he has found, I have done among my friends.

I say this in order that I may, as simply as may be, tell you how much I owe to you. He who makes the words of a man his spiritual food for years is greatly that man's debtor.

Five months later on February 7, 1872, after receiving Whitman's reply praising the poem "Love and Death," Symonds writes his second letter to the poet, again trying in his circumspect manner to elicit some comment connecting the "Calamus" theme with homosexuality-simultaneously expressing fear that his inquiries might offend, despite Whitman's praise.

I was beginning to dread that I had struck some quite wrong chord-that perhaps I had seemed to you to have arrogantly confounded your own fine thought & pure feeling with the baser metal of my own nature. What you say has reassured me and -has solaced me nearly as much as if I had seen the face and touched the hand of you-my Master!

For many years I have been attempting to express in verse some of the forms of what in a note to Democratic Vistas (as also in a blade of Calamus) you call "adhesiveness." I have traced passionate friendship through Greece, Rome, the medieval & the modern world, & I have now a large body of poems written but not published…

It was while engaged upon this work (years ago now) that I first read Leaves of Grass. The man who spoke to me from that Book impressed me in every way most profoundly and unalterably; but especially did 1 then learn confidently to believe that the Comradeship, which I conceived as on a par with the Sexual feeling for depth & strength & purity & capability of all good, was real-not a delusion of distorted passions, a dream of the Past, a scholar's fancy-but a strong & vital bond of man to man.

Yet even then how, hard I found it-brought up in English feudalism educated at an aristocratic public School (Harrow) and an over refined University (Oxford)-to winnow from my own emotions and from my conception of the ideal friend, all husks of affections and aberrations and to be a simple human being. You cannot tell quite how hard this was, & how you helped me.

I have pored for continuous hours over the pages of Calamus (as I used to pore over the pages of Plato), longing to hear you speak, burning for a revelation of your more developed meaning, panting to ask-is this what you would indicate Are then the free men of your lands really so pure & loving & noble & generous & sincere? Most of all did I desire to hear from your own lips- or from your pen-some story of athletic friendship from which to learn the truth. Yet I dared not to address you or dreamed that the thoughts of a student could abide the inevitable shafts of your searching intuition.

Shall I ever be permitted to question you & learn from you?

What the love of man for man has been in the Past I think I know. What it is here now, I know also-alas! What you say it can & shall be I dimly discern in your Poems. But this hardly satisfies me-so desirous am I of learning what you teach. Some day, perhaps-in some form, I know not what, but in your owe chosen form-you will tell me more about the Love of Friends! Till then I wait. Meanwhile you have told me more than anyone beside.-

I have been led to write too much about myself, presuming on what you said, that you should like to know me better.-

A few weeks later, on February 25, 1872, having received an encouraging token from Whitman (a newspaper containing a new poem by the American), Symonds writes again. Once more Symonds's main subject is male-male intimacy, though he forgoes any mention of "Calamus." Symonds this time encloses his poem "Callicrates," which he describes as "a study of Greek friendship" concerning "the most beautiful man among the Spartans”.

The following year, 1873, while deep in his study of Greek history and culture, Symonds wrote A Problem in Greek Ethics, a classic, early defense of homosexuality, which he did not dare publish, even privately, until ten years later. In this essay, Symonds presents his analysis of that historic form of Greek love involving an older and younger male in an affectionate, sexual, and pedagogical relation-a relation revealing homosexuality (Symonds feels) in its most positive, ideal light, and as a normal part of Greek society.

On January 29, 1877, Symonds writes again to Whitman:

To me as a man your poems-yourself in your poems-has been a constant teacher and loved companion….I wait the time when I shall be able here in England to raise my voice with more authority than I yet have in bidding men to know you: for I feel that you have for us here in the old country a message no less valuable to us than to your own people.

In the period between 1878 and 1890, Symonds led an active homosexual life, attempting to establish ongoing relationships at different times with Christian Buol and Angelo Fusato, as well as making advances to numbers of other men. In 1883, Symonds finally published a small, ten-copy edition of his homosexual defense, A Problem in Greek Ethics, written a decade earlier. He privately circulated ' it among a select group of friends, asking them for their opinions, as well as to be discreet in discussing it.

That Symonds's homosexual emancipation efforts had some early influence in the United States is documented by his correspondence with Thomas Sergeant Perry, an American educator, literary historian, editor, and friend of Henry James. On March 27, 1888, Symonds writes to Perry, with whom he had already been corresponding for some years. With some trepidation, Symonds had earlier sent Perry his homosexual defense. Symonds evidently received an encouraging reply from the American, and now apologizes

for suddenly interrupting our correspondence, just at the point when you were taking so much interest for me in the essay I sent you on Greek, Morals, & when you were clearly expecting further communications.

Perry suggested that Symonds read M. H. F. Meier's German encyclopedia entry on "Paederastie" (1837). Symonds replies that if Meier's article

is as complete as you report (and of this I can have no doubt), the necessary work has been already done. Information is accessible to scholars. And I think I shall be wise to keep my own essay in obscurity. I shall not, however, let it lie by, particularly after what you have said upon the subject. On the contrary, I will go through the whole matter again, whenever I can get at Meyer's article…& at some other books wh[ich] bear upon the topic… can then [form] a judgment whether my essay possesses any independent value.

On March 28, 1888, Horace Traubel began to visit Whitman almost daily and to write down their conversations-a process Traubel kept up for four years, compiling a series of detailed notes which now comprise five printed volumes, and additional, as yet unpublished manuscripts. These volumes reprint many of Symonds's and Edward Carpenter's letters to Whitman, and record his comments about both Englishmen. Following the chronological sequence of Whitman's references to Symonds and Carpenter it becomes clear that Whitman was long perfectly conscious of both men's interest in his "Calumus" theme and homosexuality.

On April 27, 1888, Traubel reports Whitman discussing Symonds's second letter, (of February 7, 1872, see page 342) which had inquired about the Calamus" poems:

Talked an hour or more about Symonds. W. very frank, very affectionate. "Symonds is a royal good fellow…But he has a few doubts yet to be quieted – not doubts of me, doubts rather of himself. One of these doubts is about Calamus. What does Calamus mean? What do the poems come to in the round-up? That is worrying him a good deal-their involvement, as he suspects, is the passional relations of men with men-the thing he reads so much of in the literatures of southern Europe and sees something of in his own experience. He is always driving at me about that: is that what Calamus means? because of me or in spite of me, is that what it means? I have said no, but no does not satisfy him. But read this letter-read the whole of it: it is very shrewd, very cute, in deadliest earnest: it drives me hard-almost compels me-it: is urgent, persistent: he sort of stands in the road and says: 'I won't move till you answer my question.' You see, this is an old letter-sixteen years old-and he is still asking the question: he refers to it in one of his latest notes. He is surely a wonderful man-a rare, cleaned-up man-a white-souled, heroic character. Look at: the fight he has so far kept up with his body [Symonds had tuberculosis]-yes, and so far won: it is marvelous to me, even. I have had my own troubles-I have seen ether men with troubles, too-worse than mine and not so bad as mine--but Symonds is the noblest of us all… You will be writing something about Calamus some day," said W., "and this letter, and what I say, may help to clear your ideas. Calamus needs dear ideas: it may be easily, innocently distorted from its natural, its motive, body of doctrine."

Symonds's letter to Whitman about "Calamus" is read, and this conversation follows:

Said W: "Well, what do you think of that? Do you think that could be answered?" [Traubel replied:] "I don't see why you call that letter driving you hard. It's quiet enough-it only asks questions, and asks the questions mildly enough." [Whitman replied:] "I suppose you are right-'drive' is not exactly the word: yet you know how I hate to be catechized. Symonds is right, no doubt, to ask the questions: I am just as much right if I do not answer them: just as much right if I do answer them. I often say to myself about Calamus-perhaps it means more or less than what I thought myself-means different: perhaps I don't know what it all means-perhaps never did know. My first instinct about all that Symonds writes is violently 'reactionary-is strong and brutal for no, no, no. Then the thought intervenes that I maybe do not know all my own meanings: I say to myself: 'You, too, go away, come back, study your own book-an alien or stranger, study your own book, see what it amounts to.' Sometime or other I will have to write him definitively about Calamus-give him my word for it what I' meant or mean it to mean."

On May 24, 1888, Whitman gave Traubel an apologetic letter from Symonds dated June 13, 1875, in which the Englishman expressed anxiety about being importunate or ill-advised” in sending his poem, "Callicrates," and for asking questions about "Calamus.” Traubel reports that Whitman calls this

"a beautiful letter beautiful…You will see that he harps on the Calmus poems again-always harping on 'my daughter.' I don't see why it should but his recurrence to that subject irritates me a little. This letter was written thirteen years ago…Symonds is still asking the same question. I suppose you might say-why don't you shut him up by answering him? There is no logical answer to that, I suppose: but I may ask in my turn: 'What right has he to ask questions anyway?' " W. laughed a bit. "Anyway, the question comes back at me almost every time he writes. He is courteous enough about it-that is the reason I do not resent him. I suppose he whole thing will end in an answer, some day. It always makes me a little testy to be catechized about the Leaves-I prefer to have the book answer for itself." I took the Symonds letter and read it…

I said to W.: "That's a humble letter enough: I don't see anything in that to get excited about. He don't ask you to answer the old question. In fact, he rather apologizes for having asked it." W. fired up. "Who is excited? As to that question, he does ask it again and again: asks it, asks it, asks it." I laughed at his vehemence: "Well, suppose he does. It does no harm. Besides, you've got nothing to hide. I think your silence might lead him to suppose there was a nigger in your wood pile." "Oh nonsense! But for thirty years my enemies and friends have been asking me questions about the Leaves: I'm tired of not answering questions." It was very funny to see his face when he gave a humorous twist to the fling in his last phrase. Then he relaxed and added: "Anyway, I love Symonds. Who could fail to love a man who could write such a letter? I suppose he will yet have to be answered, damn 'im!"

On September 7, 1888, Whitman gave Traubel Symonds's very first letter (dated October 7, 1871) telling his friend:

"A Symonds letter is a red day for my calendar…I am always strangely moved by a Letter from Symonds: it makes the day, it makes many days, sacred."

Whitman says of Symonds's in any letters over the year:

"they are all of the same character-warm (not too warm), a bit inquisitive, ingratiating."

On March 3, 1889, Symonds writes to his close friend and confidant, Horatio Forbes Brown:

I have chosen this particular moment to begin a new literary work of the utmost importance-my "Autobiography."

Thirty years earlier, in 1863, Symonds had first conceived of writing his sexual and affectional "confessions."

On March 27, Symonds writes to his confidant Henry Dakyns that, inspired by reading the autobiographies of Cellini and Gozzi, whose lives he was researching,

I have begun scribbling my own reminiscences. This is a foolish thing to do, because I do not think they will ever be fit to publish…

I do not know therefore what will come of this undertaking. Very likely I shall lay it aside, though the fragment is already considerable in bulk & curious in matter-& I feel it a pity …not to employ my skill upon such a rich mine of psychological curiosities as I am conscious of possessing.

…I believe I shall go forward, & leave my executors to deal with what will assuredly be the most considerable product of my pen.

You see I have "never spoken out." And it is a great temptation to speak out, when 1 have been living for two whole years in lonely intimacy with men who spoke out so magnificently as Cellini and Gozzi did.

On December 6, 1889, Symonds writes to his daughter Margaret, concerning a new work on contemporary homosexuality.

I have just completed the painful book I told you I was writing… If I were to publish it now, it would create a great sensation. Society would ring with it. But the time is not ripe for the launching of "A Problem in Modern Ethics" on the world. The Ms lies on my table for retouches, t then will go to dumber in a box of precious writings, my best work, my least presentable, until its Day of Doom.

I am glad to have got through the fierce tension of this piece of production, even though I am left with a gnawing pain in my stomach--stomach or heart, I know not which…

On December 9, 1889, Symonds writes Whitman a kind of love letter, profusely thanking the' American for the deep and positive influence of: his writings. If ever they should meet, adds Symonds, even in an afterlife, he will pursue Whitman with certain questions:

I shall ask you about things which have perplexed me here-to which I think you alone could have given me an acceptable answer. All such matters will probably sink into their proper place in the infinite perspective; and when we meet, a comrade's hand-touch and a kiss will satisfy me, and a look into your eyes.

Symonds adds that, upon reading the new edition of Whitman's "complete" works, a copy of which the poet had sent him,

I miss- and I have missed for many years in new editions-the poem which first thrilled me like a trumpet-call to you. It was called: Long I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me". Why have you so consistently omitted this in the canon of your works?

Upon me, your disciple, it made a decisive impact. "I put down the book, filled with the bitterest envy." And I rose up, to follow you. I miss the words now.-

I am old now, and you are older in years, though everlastingly young, in ways not given to all men to be so. So perhaps I ought not ask why you omitted that poem from "Calamus," and what you meant by it. It means fox me so infinitely much, I cannot say how much.

The poem Symonds missed appeared only in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, as "Calamus" number 8. This is the love lyric in which Whitman resolves (for what turned out to be just that moment) to give up the search for knowledge and his role as poet-prophet of America to "go with him I love, / it is enough for us that we are together…”

On May 6, 1890, Symonds writes to Havelock Ellis, thanking him for a copy of his recently published book, The New Spirit, which includes a chapter on Whitman as a modern-day prophet of love, the first work to emphasize the central importance of Whitman's poetry of love and sex. But Ellis's explication was not explicit enough for Symonds, who writes to him:

I wish you had said more about "Calamus": or, if you have formed an opinion, that you would tell me what you think. In many ways Whitman clearly regards his doctrine of Comradeship as what he might call "spinal". Yet he nowhere makes it clear whether he means to advocate anything approaching its Greek form, or whether he regards that as simply monstrous. I have tried but have not succeeded in drawing an explicit utterance upon the subject from him. But I felt that until my mind is made up on this important aspect of his prophecy, 1 am unable to judge him in relation to the gravest ethical and social problems.

I have ventured to touch on this point to you because I see, from the note to p.108 [New Spirit], that you have already considered it-and, as it seems to me, have both arrived at the conclusion that Whitman is hinting at Greek feeling, and also that his encouragement of "manly love" would necessarily and scientifically imply a corresponding degradation of women.

I am inclined to think that Whitman in comradeship includes any passionate form of emotion, leaving its mode of expression to the persons concerned. It is also obvious that he does not anticipate a consequent loss of respect for women. And are we justified in taking for granted that if modem society could elevate manly love into a new chivalry, this would prejudice what the world has gained by the chivalrous ideal of woman?

His own deepest utterances on the subject are, I think, in "Primeval my love for the woman I love" and "O earth my likeness."

I should much like to hear your views upon the matter; because, as I said before, I cannot estimate Whitman in his most important relations without being more sure than I am of the ground he takes up in Calamus: nor can I so forecast the future as to feel certain what would happen to the world if those instincts of manly love which are certainly prevalent in human nature, and which once at least were idealized in Greece, came to be moralized and raised to a chivalrous intensity.

In one word, does Whitman imagine that there is lurking in manly low the stuff of a new spiritual energy, the liberation of which would prove of benefit to society? And if so, is he willing to accept, condone or ignore the physical aspects of the Passions?

In the summer of 1890, Symonds makes one more effort to obtain from Whitman a statement clarifying the exact relationship between his "Calamus" poems and homosexuality. Symonds had, by this time, been writing Whitman for nineteen years, again and again questioning him about the meaning of his poems and male-male love. Symonds's interest, was now not only personal, not mere curiosity; he hoped to enlist Whitman as an explicit ally in the cause of homosexual liberation. On August 3, 1890, Symonds questions Whitman more directly than ever before, clearly seeking a clarification for use in the public dissemination of Whitman's philosophy. After some preliminaries, Symonds says:

I want next to ask you a question about a very important portion of your teaching, which has puzzled a great many of your disciples and admirers. To tell the truth, I have always felt unable to deal, as 1 wish to do, comprehensively with your philosophy of life, because I do not even yet understand the whole drift of "Calamus." If you have read Mr Havelock Ellis' "New Spirit," which contains a study of your work in thought and speculation, you may have noticed on p: 108 that he expresses some perplexity about the doctrine of "manly love," and again on p: 121 he uses this phrase "the intimate and physical love of comrades and lovers."

This reference to Havelock Ellis helps me, to explain what it is I want to ask you. In your conception of Comradeship, do you contemplate the possible intrusion of those semi-sexual emotions and actions which no doubt do occur between men? I do not ask, whether you approve of them, or regard them as a necessary part of the relation? But I should much like to know whether you are prepared to leave them to the inclinations and the conscience of the individuals concerned?

For my own part, after mature deliberation, I hold that the present laws of France and Italy are right upon this topic of morality. They place the personal relations of adults of both sexes upon the same foundation: that is to say, they protect minors, punish violence, and guard against outrages of public decency. Within these limitations, they leave individuals to do what they think fit. But, as you know, these principles are in open contradiction with the principles of English (and I believe American) legislation.

It has not infrequently occurred to me among my English friends to hear your "Calamus" objected to, as praising and propagating a passionate affection between men, which (in the language of the objectors) has "a very dangerous side," and might "bring people into criminality."

Now: it is of the utmost importance to me as your disciple, and as one who wants sooner or later to diffuse a further knowledge of your lie-philosophy by criticism; it is most important, to me to know what you really think about all this.

I agree with the objectors I have mentioned that, human nature being what it is, and some men having a strong natural bias toward persons of their own sex, the enthusiasm of "Calamus" is calculated to encourage ardent and physical intimacies.

But I do not agree with them in thinking that such a result would be absolutely prejudicial to Social interests, while I am certain that you are right in expecting a new Chivalry (if I may so speak) from one of the main and hitherto imperfectly developed factors of the human emotional nature. This, 1 take it, is the spiritual outcome of your doctrine in Calamus.

And, as I have said, I prefer the line adopted by, French and Italian legislature[s] to that of the English penal code.

Finally, what I earnestly desire to know is whether you are content to leave the ethical problems regarding the private behavior of comrades toward each other, to, the persons' own sense of what is right and fit---or whether, on the other hand, you have never contemplated while uttering the Gospel of Comradeship, the possibility of any such delicate difficulties occurring.

Will you enlighten me on this? If I am not allowed to hear from yourself or from some one who will communicate, your views, I fear I shall never be able to utter what I want to tell the world about your teaching, with the confidence and the thorough sense of not misinterpreting you in one way or the other which are inseparable from truly sympathetic and powerful exposition…

It is perhaps strange that a man within 2 months of completing his 50th year should care at all about this ethical bearing of Calamus. Of course I do not care much about it, except that ignorance on the subject prevents me from forming a complete view of your life-philosophy.

Whitman carefully composed a draft of his reply to Symonds, opening offhandedly and ingenuously with minor matters. He then feigns surprise that Symonds again asks the question he has dwelt on so many times before, and finally and emphatically denies any homosexual content in his poetry. It is noteworthy that Whitman remains perfectly friendly to Symonds in this letter and afterward; Whitman's answer has often been characterized as hostile. One writer typically and mistakenly says, "The anger fairly burps from his scalding reply.” The original of Whitman's letter is not extant, but his entire penciled draft is published with his correspondence. This draft, dated August 19, 1890, whose final version was probably somewhat altered, reads:

Y'rs of Aug: 3d just rec'd & glad to hear f'm you as always … Ab't the questions on Calamus pieces &c: they quite daze me. L of G. is only to be rightly construed by and within its own atmosphere and essential character-all of its pages & pieces so coming strictly under that-that the calamus part has even allow'd the possibility of such construction as mention'd is terrible-I am fain to hope the pages themselves are not to be even mention'd for such gratuitous and quite at the time entirely undream'd & unreck'd possibility of morbid inferences -wh' are disavow'd* by me & seem damnable. Then one great difference between you and me, temperament & theory, is restraint-I know that while I have a horror of ranting & bawling I at certain moments let the spirit impulse, (?demon) rage its utmost, its wildest, damnedest-(I feel to do so in my L of G. & I do so).

I end the matter by saying I wholly stand by L of G. as it is; long as all parts & ages are construed as I said by their own ensemble, spirit & atmosphere.

I live here 72 y'rs old & completely paralyzed-brain & right arm ab’t same as ever--digestion, sleep, appetite, &c: fair-sight & hearing half-and-half-spirits fair-locomotive power (legs) almost utterly gone-am propell'd outdoors nearly every day-get down to the river side here, the Delaware, an hour at sunset-The writing and rounding of L of G. has been to me the reason-for-being, & life comfort. My life, young manhood, mid-age, times South, &c: have all been jolly, bodily, and probably open to criticism-

Tho' always unmarried I have had six children-two are dead--One living southern grandchild, fine boy, who writes to me occasionally. Circumstances connected with their benefit and fortune have separated me from intimate relations.

I see I have written with haste & too great effusion-but let it stand.

Five days after answering Symonds, on August 24, 1890, Whitman writes to his Canadian psychiatrist friend Dr. Maurice Bucke, who had criticized Symonds on another matter:

-you are a little more severe on Symonds than I sh'd be-he has just sent me a singular letter, wh' I have answe'd (tho't at first I w'd not answer at all, but did)

Whitman adds:

(sometimes I wonder whether J A S don't come under St Paul's famous category)…

The reference is to St. Paul's condemnation of homosexuals.

Symonds replies to Whitman on September 5, 1890:

My dear Master

I am sincerely obliged to you for your letter of August 19. It is a great relief to me to know so clearly and precisely what you feel about the question I raised. Your phrases "gratuitous and quite at the time undreamed and unrecked possibility of morbid inferences which are disavowed by me and seem damnable," set the matter as straight as can be, base the doctrine of Calamus upon a foundation of granite.

I am not surprised; for this indeed is what I understood to be your meaning, since I have studied Leaves of Grass in the right way-interpreting each part by reference to the whole and in the spirit of the whole. The result of this study was that the "adhesiveness" of comradeship had no 'interblending with the "amativeness" of sexual love.

Yet you must not think that the "morbid inferences," which to you "seem damnable," are quite "gratuitous" or outside the range of possibility. Frankly speaking, the emotional language of Calamus is such as hitherto has not been used in the modem world about the relation between friends. For a student of ancient literature it presents a singular analogue to the early Greek enthusiasm of comradeship in arms-as that appeared among the Dorian tribes, and made a chivalry for prehistoric Hellas. And you know what singular anomalies were connected with this lofty sentiment in the historic period of Greek development.

Again, you cannot be ignorant that a certain percentage (small but appreciable) of male beings are always born into the world, whose sexual instincts are what the Germans call "inverted." During the last 25 years much attention, in France, Germany, Austria and Italy, has been directed to the psychology and pathology of these abnormal persons. In 1889 the Penal Code of Italy was altered by the erasion of their eccentricities from the list of crimes.

Looking then to the lessons of the past in ancient Greece, where a heroic chivalry of comradeship grew intertwined with moral abominations (I speak as a modern man), and also to the Contemporary problem offered by the class of persons I have mentioned-who will certainly have somehow to be dealt with in the light of science, since the eyes of science have been drawn towards them: a looking, I say, to both these things, it became of the utmost importance to know for certain what you thought about those "morbid inferences." For you have announced clearly that a great spiritual factor lies latent in Comradeship, ready to leap forth and to take a prominent part in the energy of the human race. It is, I repeat, essential that the interpreters of your prophecy should be able to speak authoritatively and decisively about their Master's Stimmung [disposition of mind], his radical instinct with regard to the emotional and moral quality of the comradeship he announces.

I am sorry to have annoyed you with this discussion. But you will see, 1 hope now, that it was not wholly unnecessary or unprofitable.

With the explanation you have placed in my hands, and which you give me liberty to use, I can speak with no uncertain voice, and with no dread lest the enemy should blaspheme.

The conclusion reached is, to my mind, in every way satisfactory. I am so profoundly convinced that you are right in all you say about the great good which is to be expected from Comradeship as you conceive it, and as alone it can be a salutary human bond, that the power of repudiating those "morbid inferences" authoritatively-should they ever be made seriously or uttered openly, either by your detractors or by the partizans of some vicious crankiness-sets me quite at ease as to my own course.

I will tell my bookseller in London to send you a copy of the "Contemporary" in which there is an essay by me on the "Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love." You will see something there about the Dorian Chivalry of Comradeship to wh[ich] I have alluded in this letter. It seems to me, I confess, still doubtful whether (human nature being what it is) we can expect wholly to eliminate some sensual alloy from any emotions which are raised to a very high pitch of passionate intensity. But the moralizing of the emotions must be left to social feeling and opinion in general and ultimately to the individual conscience.

Thus ends the long correspondence between Symonds and Whitman.

On October 12, 1890, Symonds writes to Ernest Rhys, quoting Whitman's disavowal of "morbid" and "damnable" inferences, commenting:

That is clear enough; & I am extremely glad to have this statement-though I confess to being surprised at the vehemence of the language.

On January 12, 1891, Symonds writes to Dr. John Johnston, another English disciple of Whitman who had visited the poet in America. Johnston had written to Symonds, sending him some photographs of Whitman. Symonds says:

It is, indeed, extremely good of you to do so much for a stranger. I take it as a sign that our Master Walt has the power of bringing folk together by a common kinship of kind feeling.-I suppose this is the meaning of "Calamus", the essence of the doctrine of Comradeship…

I wonder what more than this "Calamus" contains, whether the luminous ideal of a new chivalry based on brotherhood and manly affection will ever be realized.

On January 16, 1891, Symonds writes to confidant Henry Dakyns about A Problem in Modern Ethics, an essay, he warns Dakyns, "not intended for all eyes."

I have had a great deal of experience, both persona1 & through the communications of friends, relating to the subject of that essay lately. It is a strange chapter in human psychology, and the issues are not, I think, as yet to be forecast or apprehended. I feel that, as Whitman says, there is "something exalt previously unknown" ready to leap forth in the due time of the Spirit-which spirit will possibly have to work with man for yet 5 millions of years (more not impossibly) upon the planet.

I wish I could tell you some of the strange thing- sweet & dear & terrible & grim-which I have learned in the course of my experiments & exploration.

On January 23, 1891. Symonds writes to Dakyns:

I am glad to hear you have got my Essay. If you would do me a kindness, please scribble over its blank pages etc, something of your thoughts, & send the printed thing back to me. If you like, I will return it to you. But, as you know, it is only sent forth to stimulate discussion. I thought that the best way to do this would be to give it the form of a Ms in print, wh[ich] I have done.

Enough of that. Though I must say that I am eager about the subject horn its social & juristic aspects.

You know how vitally it has in the past interested me as a man, & how I am therefore in duty bound to work for an elucidation of the legal problem.

On February 21, 1891, Symonds writes a deep-felt letter to Whitman's American disciple Horace Traubel, saying in part:

I exchanged some words by letter with Walt lately about his "Calamus." I do not think he quite understood what I was driving at. But that does not signify. I wish you would tell me what you & your friends feel to be the central point in this most vita1 doctrine of comradeship. Out here in Europe I see signs of an awakening of enthusiastic relations between men, which tend to assume a passionate character. I am not alarmed by this, but I think it ought to be studied.

On February 23, 1891, Symonds writes to author Edmund Gosse, to whom he had sent a copy of A Problem in Modern Ethics, mentioning T. S. Perry of Boston as sympathetic to homosexual law reform:

What I should dearly desire, apropos of "the Problem," is just what you press, namely that we might come together, &have a good talk about it…

As you observe, the great thing, with regard to "The Problem," is to reach the opinion of sensible people who have no sympathy with the peculiar bias. I have sent the essay to two such men: T. S. Perry of Boston, quite one of the most learned & clearest-headed men in the USA; & to my old friend John Beddoe,…eminent as an ethnologist. Both reply emphatically that they agree with my conclusions & suggestions on the legal point, but that they do not think it possible for the vulgar to accept them.

In regard to the legalization of homosexuality Symonds adds:

The way of thinking among the proletariat, honest artisans, peasants, etc, in Italy & Switzerland-where alone I have fraternized with the people-is all in favor of free trade.

Gradually, then, I collect from various sources the impression that if our penal code could be freed from those laws without discussion, the majority of unprejudiced people would accept the change with perfect equanimity. It is also curious how much the persons I have interrogated knew about it, & how much they accept it as a fact of human nature. What everybody dreads is a public raking up of the question; & as the vast numerical majority has no personal interest in it, things remain as they are.

On May 20, 1891, Symonds writes to Henry Dakyns mentioning a radical defense of homosexuality sent from the United States:

I have received a great abundance of interesting & valuable communications in consequence of sending out a few copies of that "Problem in Modern Ethics." People have handed it about. I am quite surprised to see how frankly ardently & sympathetically a large number of highly respectable persons feel toward a subject which in society they would only mention as unmentionable.

The result of this correspondence is that I sorely need to revise, enlarge, & make a new edition of my essay; & I am almost minded to print it in a PUBLISHED VOL: together with my older essay on Greek Morals & some supplementary papers.

The oddest information sent me has come from 1) America, in the shape of sharply-defined acute partisanship for Umingthum, 2) London, in the shape of about twelve Ms confessions of English Urings, & two extraordinary narratives made by professed Hypnotists of "cures(?)" effected in cases of inveterate sexual inversion.

The "acute partisanship" for homosexuals was displayed by a Professor "Pierce (?)," an American mathematician of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who probably sent Symonds the defense later published as "A Letter from Professor X" (reprinted in this section).

On June 22, 1891, Symonds writes to Edmund Gosw about his "fierce" new American "ally." Symonds says he has

composed an appendix to my "Problem," combining several new considerations brought home to me by the correspondence wh[ich] that sparely circulated essay has educed. I found a fierce & Quixotic ally, who goes far beyond my expectations in hopes of regenerating opinion on these topics, in a Prof: Pierce (?) of Cambridge Mass. He ought to be in Europe now… If he crosses your path in London, professes Mathematics.

Edmund Gosse passed his copy of A Problem in Modern Ethics along to novelist Henry James, who thus became another of the few Americans to read Symonds's pioneering defense soon after its publication. James had met Symonds once, briefly, early in 1877. In 1882, upon publication of James's essay on Venice, James had sent Symonds a copy of this essay in appreciation for Symonds's own writings on Italy. Early in James's friendship with Gosse, James had been told about Symonds's problematic marriage. A month after James's one letter to Symonds, James's notebook entry of March 26, 1884, outlines his short story, 'The Author of Beltraffio," a chilling and fascinating work which James, either consciously or unconsciously, based on his perception of Symonds and his wife. James also knew that his old Friend from Newport, Rhode Island, Thomas Sergeant Perry, corresponded with Symonds on the subject of homosexuality.

After Gosse showed James A Problem in Modern Ethics, James wrote back, thanking him for "bringing me those marvelous outpourings." James adds:

J.A.S. is truly, I gather, a candid and consistent creature, and the exhibition is infinitely remarkable. It's, on the whole, I think, a queer place to plant the standard of duty, but he does it with extraordinary gallantry. If he has, or gathers, a band of the emulous, we may look for some capital sport. But I don't wonder that some of his friends and relations are haunted with a vague malaise. I think one ought to wish him more humor-it is really the saving salt. But the great reformers never have it-and he is the Gladstone of the affair.

As his own note of humor, James signed his letter "yours-if I may safely say so!-ever H.J.”

In July 1891, Symonds writes to Havelock Ellis:

I have privately printed two essays, which deal with the psychological problem [of homosexuality] in ancient Greece and modern Europe… The real point now is Legislative. France and Italy stand in glaring contrast to England and Germany. And the medical and forensic authorities, who are taking it up, seem quite ignorant both of history and fact. Their pathological hypothesis will certainly not stand the test of accumulated experience.

The subject of homosexuality, says Symonds,

ought to be scientifically, historically, impartially investigated, instead of being left to Labby's in expansible legislation.

"Labby" was Henry du Pre Labouchere, member of the House of Commons, who in 1885 had sponsored a law making the punishment for homosexuality two years at hard labor.

On December 29, 1891, Symonds writes his confidant Horatio Forbes Brown, concerning the sexually explicit autobiography which-he, Symonds, has

so passionately, unconventionally set down on paper. Yet I think it a very singular book-perhaps unique, in the disclosure of a type of man who has not yet been classified. I am anxious therefore that this document should not perish… I want to save it from destruction after my death, and yet to preserve its publication for a period when it will not be injurious to my family. I do not just now know how to meet the difficulty…You will inherit my MSS if you survive me. But you take them freely, to deal with them as you like, under my will…

On February 27, 1892, Syrnonds thanks the American Horace Traubel for his letters concerning Whitman's precarious health. Later the same night, Symonds - continues:

You do not know, & I can never tell any one, what Whitman has been to me.

Brought up in the purple of aristocratic school and university, provided with more money than is good for a young man, early married to a woman of noble name & illustrious connections, I might have been a mere English gentleman, had not I read Leaves of Grass in time.

I am not sure whether I have not abused the privilege of reading in that book It revolutionized my previous conceptions, & made me another man. Revolution is always a bad thing. And so, bred as I have described myself, it is possible that I have not attained to that real & pure nobility of nature in dealing with my fellowmen which Whitman teaches & exemplifies.

I only know that he made me a free man; he helped me to work at my chosen trade, literature, for better or for worse, as I was made to do it: but he also made me love my brethren, & seek them out with more perhaps of passion than he would himself approve.

Working upon a nature so prepared, as mine was, the strong agent of Whitman's spirit could hardly fail to produce a fermentation.

He says himself: I shall do harm as well as good.

To clinch all, he has only done for me good; & the harm which may have come to me, from intemperate use of his precepts, is the fault of my previous environment or of my own feeble self.

If I have seemed to be cold, here & there, about Whitman, it is not because I am not penetrated with his doctrine; but because I know by experience how powerfully that doctrine works, & how it may be misused & misunderstood.

Symonds adds:

If Whitman is able to hear a word from an old friend, whisper in his ear that so long as I live I shall endeavor to help on his work & to the best of my poor ability shall try to do this in his spirit.

On March 26, 1892, Walt Whitman died, after a long illness. His inspiration, however, remained a living force in the continuing homosexual emancipation work of Symonds, later of Edward Carpenter.

On June 13, 1892, Symonds writes a friend who was sharing rooms with Havelock Ellis, to ask Ellis

if he would take a book from me on "Sexual Inversion" for his Science Series?

Symonds adds:

the historical study of Greece is absolutely essential to the psychological treatment of the subject now. It is being fearfully mishandled by pathologists and psychiatrics professors, who know nothing whatsoever about its real nature…

A week later on June 20, 1892, Symonds writes to Ellis, glad to hear he is disposed to consider collaboration on a book about homosexuality:

This, I feel, is one of the psychological and physiological questions when demand an open treatment at last. The legal and socia1 persecution of abnormal .natures requires revision…

…The so-called scientific psychiatrists" are ludicrously in error, by diagnosing as necessarily morbid what was the leading emotion of the best and noblest men in Hellas… The theory of morbidity is more humane, but it is not less false, than that of sin or vice.

If they are to collaborate, says Symonds,

we should have to agree together about the legal aspects of the subject. I should not like to promulgate any book, which did not show the absurdity and injustice of the English law. The French and Italian Penal Codes are practically right, though their application is sometimes unfair. (Do not imagine that I want to be aggressive or polemical. )

I am almost certain that this matter will very soon attract a great deal of attention; and that it is a field in which pioneers may not only do excellent service to humanity, but also win the laurels of investigators and truth-seekers.

If you do not feel able to collaborate with me, I shall probably proceed to some form of solitary publication, and I should certainly give my name to anything I produced.

On July 7, 1892, Symonds writes to Ellis:

With regard to "abnormal" and "morbid." I think sex-inverts can only be called "abnormal" in so far as they are in a minority, i.e. form exceptions to the large rule of sex. I doubt, from what I have observed in the matter, that sexual inversion is ever and by itself morbid. It may often of course co-exist with morbidity… One great difficulty is to estimate how much it is a matter of habit: that is to say, to what extent the sexual instinct is indifferent, and liable to be swayed one side or another by custom and surrounding. What X know about the Greeks and Persians (I know little about Eskimos) and what I observe in Italy, leads me to attach very great influence to custom and example: but the more one ascribes .to such causes, the less can one talk on morbidity.

On July 8, 1892, in an intimate letter to his beloved daughter Margaret, Symonds, who had tuberculosis, reveals that-he is haunted by thoughts of death and unfinished work:

Before I go hence & see the lovely earth no longV., I want to do so much still. I ‘want to…publish my work on Sexual Aberrations, & to get my Autobiography finished.

In January 1892, Symonds had written the first of a series of letters to Edward Carpenter. Whitman, and a sense of each other's interest in homosexuality, linked two men. On December 29, 1892, Symonds writes to Carpenter:

I am so glad that H. Ellis has told you about our project. I never saw him. But I like his way of corresponding on this subject. And I need somebody of medical importance to collaborate with. Alone, I could make but little effect-the effect of an eccentric.

We are agreed enough upon fundamental points; the only difference is that he is too much inclined to stick to the neuropathical theory of explanation. But I am whittling that away to a minimum. And I don't think it politic to break off from the traditional line of analysis, which has been going rapidly forward in Europe for the last 20 years upon the psychiatric theory. Each new book reduces the conception of neurotic disease.

I mean to introduce a new feature into the discussion, by giving a complete account of homosexual love in ancient Greece…

It is a pity that we cannot write freely on the topic. But when we meet, I will communicate to you facts which prove beyond all doubt to my mind that the most beneficent results, as regards health and nervous energy, accrue from the sexual relation between men: also, that when they are carried on with true affection, through a period of years, both comrades become united in a way which would be otherwise quite inexplicable.

The fact appears to me proved. The explanation of it I cannot give, & I do not expect it to be given yet. Sex has been unaccountably neglected. Its physiological & psychological relations even in the connection between man & woman are not understood. We have no theory which is worth anything upon the differentiation of the sexes, to begin with. In fact, a science of what is the central function of human beings remains to be sought.

This, I take it, is very much due to physiologists, assuming that sexual instincts follow the build of the sexual organs; & that when they do not, the phenomenon is criminal or morbid. In fact, it is due to science at this point being still clogged with religious & legal presuppositions…

My hope has always been that eventually a new chivalry, i.e., a second elevated form of human love, will emerge & take its place for the service of mankind by the side of that other which was wrought out in the Middle Ages.

It will be complementary, by no means prejudicial to the elder & more commonly acceptable. It will engage a different type of individual in different spheres of energy-aims answering to those of monastic labor in common or of military self-devotion to duty taking here the place of domestic cares & procreative utility.

How far away the dream seems! And yet I see in human nature stuff neglected, ever-present parish [pariah?] and outcast that 1 live, such a chivalry could arise.

Whitman, in Calamus, seemed to strike the key-note. And though he repudiated (in a very notable letter to myself) the deductions which have logically to be drawn from Calamus, his work will remain infinitely helpful."

On January 21, 1893, Symonds writes again to Carpenter, saying in part:

I will copy out for you Whitman's very singular letter to me about Calamus, when I have time. I feel sure he would not have written it, when he first published Calamus. I think he was afraid of being used to lend his influence to "Sods" [sodomites]. Did not quite trust me perhaps. In his Symposium Speeches: he called me "terribly suspicious"…

The bending of Social Strata in masculine love seems to me one of , its most pronounced, & socially hopeful, features. Where it appears, it abolishes class distinctions, & opens by a single operation the cataract-blinded eye to their futilities.

In removing the film of prejudice & education, it acts like the oculist & knife. If it could be acknowledged & extended, it would do very much to further the advent of the right sort of Socialism.

On February 13, 1893, Symonds describes to Carpenter Whitman's reaction on being questioned directly about homosexuality:

I wrote in the Summer of 1890 to Whitman, asking him what his real feeling, about masculine love was, & saying that I knew people in England who had a strong sexual bias in such passions, felt themselves supported % encouraged by Calamus…

Whitman's retort is quoted, and Symonds continues:

That is all that is to the point. He rambles on about his being less "restrained" by temperament & theory than 1 (J.A.S.) am-"I at certain moments let the spirit impulse (female) rage its utmost wildest damnedest (I feel I do so sometimes in L. of G. & I do so).

After completing his autobiography, John Addington Symonds died in Rome in April 1893. When Henry James heard the news, he privately paid tribute to that “poor, much-loved, much-doing, passionately out-giving man."

Edward Carpenter

Edward Carpenter was, with Symonds, one of the two major English homosexual emancipation pioneers, a calling inspired in part by the works of Whitman. Another iconoclast American, Henry David Thoreau, also influenced Carpenter to turn against commercialism and toward the English socialist movement led by William Morris. Carpenter became a socialist organizer and lecturer, as well as an exponent of Oriental philosophy, prison reform, and an early, outspoken advocate of the woman’s and homosexual emancipation movements of his time.

Edward Carpenter's "passionate sense of love" for males first found overt expression when he was twenty, in 1864, his freshman year at Cambridge divinity school. At that time he discovered others like himself and made, he says, a few special friends "with whom he occasionally had sexual relations.” Four years later, in 1868, Carpenter first read Whitman's poems, in the little garden outside his rooms at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 1873, Carpenter's "recoil" from the clerical life "was strengthened by a new enthusiasm for Greek sculpture" seen on a trip to Italy, and also by several "inspiring friendships." In the summer of 1874, he renounced his Holy Order and took a job lecturing in the industrial towns of northern England. The same year, on July 12, 1874, Carpenter wrote his first letter to Walt Whitman, reporting the American poet's profound influence on many individuals in England, relating this to the developing self-consciousness of women and of the working class, and thanking Whitman for legitimizing for him "the love of men:"

My dear friend…

My chief reason for writing {so I put it to myself) is that I can't help wishing you should know that there are many here in England to whom your writings have been as the waking up to a new day…I know that you do care that those thoughts you weary not to proclaim should be seized upon by others over the world and become the central point of their lives… When I say "many" of course I do not mean a multitude (I wish I did) but many individuals – each himself (or herself, for they are mostly women-fluid, courageous and tender) the centre of a new influence. All that you have said, the thoughts that you have given us, are vital-they will grow-that is certain.

In Whitman's writings, Carpenter discerns a new spirit under "the old forms,…reshaping the foundations before it alters the superstructure …For "English respectability" there is almost no hope, says Carpenter; Money and materialism rule:

Yet the women will save us. I wish I could tell you what is being done by them- everywhere-in private and in public. The artisans too are shaping themselves. While Society is capering and grimacing over their heads they are slowly coming to know their minds; and exactly as they come to know their minds they come to the sense of power to fulfill them…

You hardly know, I think, in America (where the life, though as yet material, is so intense) what the relief is here to turn from the languid inanity of the well-fed to the clean hard lines of the workman's face. Yesterday there came (to mend my door) a young workman with the old divine light in his eyes-even I call it old though I am not thirty--and perhaps, more than all, he has made me write to you.

Because you have, as it were, given me a ground for the love of men I thank you continually in my heart. (-And others thank you though they do not say so.) for you have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest instinct of their nature.

Women are beautiful; but, to some, there i s that which passes the love of women.

It is enough to live wherever the divine beauty of love may flash on men; but - indeed its real. And enduring light seems infinitely far from us in this our day. Between the splendid dawn of Greek civilization and the high universal noon of Democracy there is a strange horror of darkness on us. We look face to face upon each other, 'but we do not know. At the last, it is enough to know that the longed for realization is possible-will be, has been, is even now somewhere-even though we find it not…Slowly-I think-the fetters are falling from men's feet, the cramps and crazes of the old superstitions are relaxing, the idiotic ignorance of class contempt is dissipating. If men shall learn to accept one another simply and without complaint, if they shall cease to regard themselves because the emptiness of vanity is filled up with love; and yet shall honor the free, immeasurable gift of their own personality, delight in it and bask in it without false shames and affectations-then your work will be accomplished: and men for the first time will know of what happiness they are capable.

…It is a pleasure to me to write to you, for there are many things which 1 find it hard to say to any one here. And for my sake you must not mind reading what I have written.

On January 3, 1876, Carpenter writes once more to Whitman, asking "Will it ever be that human love …will cease to be a mere name?" Picking up on Whitman's poetically expressed desire to "infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand," Carpenter says:

Dear friend, you have so infused yourself that it is daily more and more possible for men to walk hand in hand over the whole earth. As you have given your life, so will others after you-freely, with amplest reward transcending all suffering-for the end that you have dreamed. . . . What have we dreamed? a union which even now binds us closer than all thought high up above all individual gain or loss—an individual self which stands out free and distinct, …love disclosing each ever more and more. See, you have made the earth sacred for me.

Meanwhile, they say that your writings are "immoral": and you have to defend yourself against people who will misunderstand your defense as they misunderstood your original words. Need I say that I do not agree with them in the least? I believe on the contrary that you have been the first to enunciate the law of purity and health 'which sooner or later must assert itself. After ages perhaps man will return consciously to the innocent joyous delight in his own natural powers and instincts which characterized the earlier civilizations. I do not understand what it is to be "shocked" by these things: it seems to me childish. But in the meantime it is certain that people do not understand. In some way or other our modern civilization has become narrowed and one-sided. People's minds are dwarfed: one portion of their nature grows up in the dark (and ceases to be healthy). Men have lost the freedom (free masonry) of Nature and are plagued with insane doubts of their Duty. For a time I suppose men must grow up in swaddling bands of morality, and a certain instinct makes them cling to them till they have grown to be greater than, and the masters of, morality. But I think indeed the time has come for people to learn to unwrap these bands, and that from this time there wil1,be a world-wide growth in the direction you have pointed out. So while I regret sometimes that there are things in your writings which make it difficult, sometimes impossible, to commend them to some who might otherwise profit by them, yet I feel it is best that they should be there. Their presence delays the understanding and acceptation of your message, but your message would not be complete without it, and slowly, gradually, increasingly, without end, its grandeur will dawn upon men.

I feel that my work is to carry on what you have begun. You have opened the way: my only desire is to go onward with it. Though it is out of all question to suppose that one generation or ten generations will make much difference in men's minds in the direction of the ideal state, still-to contemplate that ideal and to live slowly translating it into real life and action is quite certainly the only good-and is sufficient. I do not think of anything that I have done except as preparation…

In April 1877, Edward Carpenter left England on his first trip to the United States. On May 2, Carpenter knocked at the door of .431 Stevens Street, Camden, New Jersey. There, in the home of Walt Whitman's brother, Carpenter met the poet face to face. Carpenter's account of this and subsequent meetings, published in 1897, is rather uninspired; the more interesting aspects of their discourse perhaps went unrecorded. A few days later, Carpenter joined Whitman in the country, where he had gone to stay with the Stafford family, whose printer son, Harry, was one of the American poet's great joys. Carpenter seems also to have been quite taken by him.

In May 1880, Edward Carpenter went to live near Sheffield with a working-class friend, Albert Fearnehough-and Fearnehough's wife. Here Carpenter started work on a book of poetry modeled after Whitman's, entitled Toward Democracy, first published in 1883. In 1884, Carpenter made his second trip across the ocean, and on June 7 again visited Whitman. On the morning of June 30, Carpenter paid his last visit to the poet's small house at 328 Mickle Street in Camden, New Jersey, and reports:

We had a long and intimate conversation. He was very friendly and affectionate, and sat by the open window … while he talked about "Leaves of Grass." "What lies behind 'Leaves of Grass' is something that few, very few, only one here and there, perhaps oftenest women, are at all in a position to seize. It lies behind almost every line; but concealed, studiedly concealed; some passages left purposely obscure. There is something in my nature furtive like an old hen! You see a hen wandering up and down a hedgerow, looking apparently quite unconcerned, but presently she finds a concealed spot, and furtively lays an egg, and comes away as though nothing had happened! That is how I felt in writing 'Leaves of Grass.'… I think there are truths which it is necessary to envelop or wrap up.

On October 23, 1885, Carpenter, back in England, writes a "practical" letter to Whitman, announcing his plans to bring out a second edition of Toward Democracy. This was the first edition to include a few poems of overt homosexual inspiration, described by one contemporary reviewer as "not wholesome to read!' Carpenter's letter to Whitman adds:

I send you a photo I had taken a little time ago with a young fellow who is an old friend of mine-in Sheffield-it is not very good of me, though very fair of 'tother one.

On May 15, 1888, Whitman, going through his papers handed Traubel, Carpenter's first letter thanking Whitman for giving Carpenter "a ground for the love of men" (letter of July 12, 1874). Whitman said of this letter:

"It is beautiful, like a confession…I seem to get very near to his heart and he to mine in that letter: it has a place in our personal history-an important place. Carpenter was never more thoroughly Carpenter than just there, in that tender mood of self-examination,… Carpenter is a thoroughly wholesome man-alive, clean, from head to foot."

A few days I& on May 21, 1888, Whitman gave Trubel another latter from Carpenter, commenting:

"The best of Carpenter is in his humanity: he manages to stay with people: he was a university man, yet managed to save himself in time."

So many university men, said Whitman,

"rather sympathize with the struggles of the people--but they are for the most part way off-remote: they only see the battle from afar. Carpenter manages to stay in the midst of it."

On December 6, 1888, Traubel says Whitman was writing a letter to Carpenter, from whom, earlier that day, a visitor had arrived with an introduction. Whitman mistakenly told Traubel that Carpenter had visited the United States three or four times-apparently Carpenter had made a strong impression. Whitman continued:

"Carpenter is a youngish man … Italian in appearance: radical of the radicals: come-outer: one of the social fellows in England who get constitutions by the ears-stir up thought, progress…. I question at times: isn't there too much of this? too much crying, screaming, for progress? Shouldn't the brakes be put down?" But he "always rejected" his "suspicions." He came "around inevitably to" his "optimism."…

W. said Carpenter had "come of wealthy parents." "The father died:… Edward came in for his share of the patrimony: quite a show able share it was, too." C. had been "much attached" to a young man whose "great ambition had been to get a farm of his own to work, to live upon: Edward encouraged him. When he came into his money Edward invested in land: the friend was married: the three lived together…What would "come out of Carpenter's life" was "'yet to be developed."

Whitman added:

"These vivid young fellows-what are they going to lead us to? The world abounds with 'em: earnest, astute, clarified, wanting to act, seeking progress, progress, progress-the fever of the age!" Then he laughed. "After all" was he "not as radical as the most radical of 'em?"

On December 29, 1888, Whitman gave Traubel another Carpenter letter (of January 3, 1876, see page 360), part of which was suspiciously missing:

The signature was cut out. Consequently some of the writing on the other side of the sheet is gone…[Whitman] called it "one of Carpenter's early fine letters'- adding: "He was never nobler than then, in that period of interrogating enthusiasm."

Carpenter's letter began with a reference to one of Whitman's more explicitly homoerotic "Calamus" poems, and went on to speculate about a future world of love. Whitman comments:

"Edward was beautiful then-is so now: one of the torch-bearers, as they say: an exemplar of a loftier England: he is not generally known, not wholly a welcome presence, in conventional England: the age is still, while ripe for some things, not ripe for him, for his sort, for us, for the human protest: not ripe though ripening. O Horace, there's a hcI1 of a lot to be done yet: don't you see? a hell of a lot: you fellows coming along now will have your hands full: we're passing a big job on to you.

In 1894, the year after John Addington Symonds's death, Edward Carpenter began to publish through the Manchester Labour Press, a socialist printing plant, a series of three pamphlets: Sex-Love; Woman; and Marriage. In January 1895, Carpenter's fourth pamphlet, Homogenic Love and Its Place in s Free Society, was published "for private circulation only" by the same Labour Press. Homogenic Love is a classic, early defense of homosexuality, "homogenic" being Carpenter's alternative to "homosexual"-a term he objected to because of its half-Greek, half- Latin derivation. In this essay, Carpenter suggests that the "special function" of same-sex unions i s the "social and heroic work" of generating philosophical concepts and ideals which help to transform human lives and society.

Using Whitman's sexual politics as a point of reference, Carpenter further suggests a connection between feminism and Lesbianism-especially in the United States:

It is noticeable…that the movement among women for their own liberation and emancipation, which is taking place all over the civilized world, has been accompanied by a marked development of the homogenic passion among the female sex. It may be said that a certain strain in the relations between the opposite sexes which has come about owing to a growing consciousness among women that they have been oppressed and unfairly treated by men, and a growing unwillingness to ally themselves unequally in marriage--that this strain has caused womankind to draw more closely together and to cement alliances of their own…such comrade-alliances-and of a quite passionate kind-are becoming increasingly common, and especially perhaps among the more cultured classes of women, who are working out the great cause of their sex's liberation; nor is it difficult to see the importance of such alliances in such a campaign. In the United States where the battle of Women's independence has been fought, more vehemently perhaps than here, the tendency mentioned is even more strongly marked.

Carpenter's public work as a leader of a movement for homosexual freedom had begun. It was gaining momentum when the conviction of Oscar Wilde in April 1895, caused a reactionary panic, which held back the homosexual emancipation movement in England for some time.

In July and August of 1897, Carpenter published, in a London journal called The Reformer, a long essay on homosexuality titled "An Unknown People." In the same year, Carpenter's anonymous sexual history, written by himself, appeared as "Case VI" in Sexual Inversion by Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds. The Ellis-Symonds book was first published in Berlin, in German, in 1896, then in London, revised and in English, in 1897. The first English edition included Symonds and Ellis's names as coauthors on the title page, but the Symonds family and executor Horotio Brown, fearing scandal, succeeded in buying up and destroying almost all existing copies. A second edition of 1897 removed Symonds's name as coauthor of the text, as did all subsequent editions. Brown also prohibited the publication of Symonds's sexually explicit autobiography until 1976.

In 1898, George Merrill moved in with Edward Carpenter, and the two lived together as lovers for thirty years, until Merrill's death in 1928. In 1902, Carpenter edited and first issued lolaus: An Anthology of Friendship, one of the first collections of homosexually relevant documents of male-male intimacy. Carpenter's Days with Walt Whitman (1906) is surprisingly silent on the subject of homosexuality. But in the same year, an expanded fifth edition of Carpenter's previously published love's Coming of Age for the first time included a chapter on homosexuality - the essay, "An Unknown People," now revised and re-titled "The Intermediate Sex." In 1910, Carpenter first published an essay on important connections between homosexuality and religion in early civilizations (reprinted in 1911 in G. Stanley Hall's American Journal of Religious Psychology and Mucation). In 191 4, this article became part of Carpenter's book, Intermediate Types among Primitive , Folk, a survey of anthropological research into homosexuality among native peoples and in classical Greece and medieval Japan. In 1916, Carpenter published My Days and Dreams, "autobiographical notes" explicit about his homosexuality, though they deemphasize its personal and political import.

In 1922, Carpenter read a paper on Whitman before the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, "the only official organization formed by English male homosexuals in the early part of the twentieth century. Two years later the society published Carpenter's paper as the pamphlet Some Friends of Walt Whitman: A Study in Sex Psychology. Here Carpenter i s more explicit about Whitman than he was ever before in print. Whitman's "Calamus" poems, says Carpenter,

illustrate and give expression to what we would now call the homo sexual passion -which passion, although at that time ignored and unacknowledged by the world, was burning fiercely within him and pressing for deliverance.

Carpenter criticizes Symonds for asking Whitman if he accepted the fact that his poems might stimulate physical relations among men. Whitman, says Carpenter,

could hardly with truthfulness deny any knowledge or contemplation of such inferences; but if on the other hand he took what we might call the reasonable line, and said that, while not advocating abnormal relations in any way, he of course made allowance for possibilities in that direction and the occasional development of such relations, why, he knew that the moment he said such a thing he would have the whole American Press at his heels, snarling and slandering, and distorting his words in every possible way. Things are pretty bad here in this country; but in the States (in such matters) they are ten times worse. Symonds ought to have known and allowed for this, but apparently did not do so.

Carpenter said that Symonds's question to Whitman, and Whitman's answer, "has given a handle to the reactionary folk and a push in the 'direction of Comstock and his crew." (The American Anthony Comstock and his followers in the Society for the Suppression of Vice, formed in the 1870s, were crusaders against obscene literature, abortion, and paintings of the nude.) Carpenter continues:

We must remember, too, how different, the atmosphere on all these matters was then [1891] (especially in the U.S.A.) from what it is now [1924] in the centers of modern culture, and in places like Oxford and Cambridge and London, where you can nowadays talk as freely as you like, and where sex. variations and even abnormalities are almost a stock subject of conversation.

Personally, having known Whitman fairly intimately, I do not lay great stress on that letter. Whitman was in his real disposition the most candid, but also the most cautious of men. An attempt was made on this occasion to drive him into some sort of confession of his real nature; and it may be that that very effort aroused all his resistance and caused him to hedge more than ever.

Carpenter emphasizes:

There is no doubt in my mind that Walt Whitman was before all a lover of the Male. His thoughts turned towards Men first and foremost, and it is no good disguising that fact. A thousand passages in his poems might be quoted in support of that contention…

Carpenter discusses Whitman as a prophet of a developing homosexual emancipation movement of general social import:

In the case of Whitman–united as he was by must intimate ties to one or more men-friends, we see already the emergence of a new organic inspiration and a new power of life. His poems radiate this power in all directions. Thousands of people date from their first reading of them a new era in their lives… Thousands date from the reading of them a new inspiration and an extraordinary access of vitality carrying their activities and energies into new channels. How far this process may a go we hardly yet know, but that it is one of the factors of future evolution we hardly doubt. I mean that the loves of men towards each other-and similarly the loves of women for each other-may become factors of future human evolution just as necessary and well-recognized as the ordinary loves which lead to the…propagation of the race. If so, we may' safely say that we see here in operation a great power which is already playing its part in molding the world, and one which we are morally bound not to deny and disown, and not to run away from, at the risk of denying our humanity and committing the sin, so execrated in the New Testament, of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.

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