Claude M. Gruener: Charles Warren Stoddard, 1843-1909

A Brief Biography

”I fall in love too easily

I fall in love too fast

I fall in love too terribly hard

For love to ever last.”

While written some 100 years after his birth, these 1945 lyrics to the film “Anchors Aweigh” could easily have been sung by Charles Warren Stoddard. Born August 7, 1843 in Rochester, NY, Stoddard’s life was largely one long hunt for the perfect man, preferably a younger “Kid.” This hunt plus an interest in the exotic took him all over the world to faraway places at a time when travel was slow and tedious. His search for a Kid was a tough and often all-consuming one. This ideal person would be younger than him, attractive, well built, serve him sexually, take care of him if necessary, go out with him when possible and hopefully live with him. While many men were “chosen” for his attention, few accepted and of these few, even fewer lived up to his ideal.

With an income from writing and sometimes lecturing ranging from almost nothing to reasonably comfortable, one day he was poor and worrying about where he would stay and how he could buy food. The next day, when checks from his writings came in, he could sail to Hawaii and the South Seas or elsewhere and lavish gifts on men he liked. Unfortunately, the majority of his intended Kids went on to marry women.

In his own words, Stoddard’s home was “under his hat.” He was a butterfly, flitting from one man and location to another, never laying down roots that lasted very long. In his paradoxical life, if a man such as artist Francis Davis Millet showed reciprocating interest, it was time after a while of enjoying it to flutter on to another man who might catch his eye. One of his longest and perhaps most perfect relationships was with Millet in Venice, but attracted by yet another man and feeling constricted by Millet’s attention and sometimes worship, Stoddard flew on to prettier flowers. This left Millet pleading in his letters for his “old man” and butterfly to come back or at least meet him in various places in Europe and America to resume their relationship and travel together. It was all largely to no avail.

While flitting around the globe, Stoddard did manage to write enough to stay out of the poorhouse. Arguably his most famous book was “South-Sea Idyls,” about his travels to Hawaii and veiled remembrances of the natives he fell for there. The book was illustrated by then scandalous drawings of semi-naked natives, but got generally good reviews, enough to get it republished in various incarnations in the U.S. and England. His travel writings with their personal viewpoints and feelings about Europe, the South Seas, Egypt and other still mysterious or unknown places to many Americans made him popular with readers. These were published in various publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, Overland Monthly, Scribner’s and others.

Becoming a devout Catholic at age 24, he sometimes considered becoming a priest and wrote for various religious publications including “Ave Maria,” edited by his long-time friend and supporter, Father Daniel Hudson. The magazine was published in Notre Dame where he taught for a short time. He also wrote a book, “A Troubled Heart and How It was Comforted at Last,” on why he was a Catholic and how his conversion affected his life. Besides his teaching at Notre Dame, he also taught literature at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Stoddard, with his half-hidden relationships with men, other professors, and even students, usually managed to keep a little bit ahead of scandal. Sometimes his secretive life did catch up with him, however, resulting in misunderstandings with his heterosexual friends and losing his job at Notre Dame. It was a time when homosexuality was not well understood or even mentioned in polite company.

Reaching the age of 66, he died of a heart attack and is buried in Monterey, California.

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