Jonathan Ned Katz: Francis Davis Millet and Charles Warren Stoddard, 1874-1912

Empty Chair, Empty Bed, Empty House

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.

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

xxxxxx 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

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