John Addington Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and Walt Whitman: 1892-1893

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 I (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).

Symonds quotation from Whitman's letter of August 19, 1890, differs significantIy from the surviving draft of the same letter quoted earlier (from Whitman's published correspondence, vol. 5 [1969], the editors of which do not mention the variant). Whitman's draft says: "I at certain moments let the spirit impulse, (? demon) rage its utmost…."

It is likely that Symonds, a historian, quoted Whitman accurately. The implications of the variant remain to be explored.

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."

Next article on resistance: Edward Carpenter and Walt Whitman: 1868-1922