The Uranian and the Uraniad in the Military and Naval Careers; in the Athletic Professions: and in Royal, Political and Aristocratic Social Life: Types and Biographies.
The Military Ho- mosexual: in No other Profession is the Uranian More Frequent.
Especially contrary to the notion that the man-loving man is always effeminate in body and temper, stands the fact that in scarcely any other profession—in no other walk of practical life—has the full sexualism of Uranistic passion been more general than in the ranks of soldiers and sailors. We might say that in no other one is it so large. In the army and the marine we find the Uranian in enormous proportion. Here, too, he is met in the full display of his bodily vigour, his force of character, his activity of mind, his virile. courage, pugnacity, indifference to troublesome luxury, and his generous comradeship. In short the "race" is here seen being and doing "all that may become a man", save preferring womanly embraces to those of some brother-in-arms, or comrade of the watch. The fire of similisexualism nowhere smoulders, or burns up, more ardently than in casernes and forecastles, in the officer's mess or on the quarterdeck. From the first days of armies and argosies, uranian comrades have marched and sailed and fought together as friends and—lovers.
How Far a Result of Environments?
With the instance of the sailor his homosexualism seems in a considerable degree, a cultivated—, unconsciously cultivated—condition. In the course of sea-life come the long voyages, where men are continually in companionship only with men; where solitudes, duty and the battles of the elements emphasize masculine nearness. There is the necessary abstinence from women, the bachelor-state common to the sailor, the tendency to idealize in the finer-natured seaman; the sense of living in a mysterious elemental relation to Nature herself, of being only vaguely bound by conventional human notions—if bound at all. These conditions may not create the emotion of man-love; but they stimulate it. It has been said that "every sailor in two or three" is more or less homosexual. Certainly sailors criticize lightly the homosexual ties in constant existence round them. It is a sort of sea-secret. And it can level even rank. Incidents of uranianism point out the naval officer and the common sailor, as Uranian or Dionian-Uranian in "friendships". The theory that a sailor's sexuality turns him toward having 'a wife in every port' is notably wrong. It would sometimes be better to say 'a wife in every—ship'.
Distinguished navigators and sea-warriors, daring pirates, storm-defying Wikings, bronzed captains in the merchant-services of the world, have been also uranian lovers. Some names are historic. We find one such Dionian-Uranian in Yasco da Gama. Another, according to accusation, was Cornelis van Tromp, the son of Martin van Tromp. Such too was Magellan (Fernâo de Magalhaes, one of whose descendants not long dead, the Brazilian diplomat and litterateur Domingo Magalhaes (1811-1882) was professedly Uranian, and the authour of the sometime famous "Urania" poem (Vienna, 1862). One of the most eminent of English naval commanders of the century just closed was prominent in an homosexual scandal, suppressed vigorously on account of the high personages involved, but disconcertingly general at its date.
That the British navy long ago was remarked for homosexual cultures, a classic English novel hints. A curious sea-incident occurs in Smollet's Roderick Random", where the hero of the novel is stationed on a ship commanded, for a time, by an effeminate uranistic officer, living in open sexual intimacy with his doctor. Also is to be cited the other passage in the same story, where a homosexual nobleman, enamoured of the young surgeon, tries to broaden Random's views as to intercourse between males, by the praise and perusal of Petronius. (See chapters XXXIV and LI, of the novel).
Letter from a Naval Officer.
In illustration of what has been said, the following extract from a letter from a naval-officer, in the English service, is offered:
"I have been stationed, as you know, on two or three ships, and I think they have been thoroughly representative of the best sort of British seamen. On the D—, homosexuality was rife, and one could see with his own eyes how it was going on, even between officers, i have been told that in some services (the Austrian and French, for instance), nobody ever remarks about it, taking such a thing as a natural proceeding. That may be so or not; but in any case nobody was "shocked" on board either the A— or the B—. There were half a dozen "ties' that we knew about. To my knowledge, sodomy is a regular thing on ships that go on long cruises. In the war-ships, I should say that the sailor often pereferred it … In the instances that I have described, the intimacy was spoken of—slyly. The friendships between men, in all grades of service at sea, tend to be much closer, more sentimental than when ashore, Everything makes for confidentiality, one is shut away from the world, and so much in pairs with his friends, during watches and so on … Of course when the forecastle men come ashore they are keen after the girls, but sometimes that interest quite disappears, I am told … That it does in the case of many sea-friendships between homosexual officers, I know …".
Instance.
An example of homosexualism in a greatnaval milieu occurred in the summer of 1908, at Brest, France; with a grave scandal, caused by the rape of a voung sailor one night by a drunken-ship-master, in the same caserne, who also forcibly outraged (the same night) two other young sailors, in the same barracks. A series of homosexual "rivettes" (cliques) were disclosed; and matters were kept with difficulty from wider notice. The affair was made more agitating because of the confusion in it of the identity of the amorous patron-pilote responsible, between whom and a certain other officer a remarkable likeness unluckily existed; leading to a violent but rather comic rectification.
Something of the influence elemental to sailor-homosexuality is admirably expressed in the novels of "Pierre Loti", already referred to; the authour being a captain in the French marine. "My Brother Yves", for instance, is manifestly uranistic, the passional affection for young Yves on the part of the narrator going beyond mere friendship; a strong note of sexual relationship at times sounded in the tale.
The Army-Envi- rouillent and Ura- nianism.
The army-environment does not so shut in the soldier from general external influences, and from contact with women. Yet the soldier, whether a general or of the file, in numberless examples is instinctively indifferent toward feminine beauty. Day-by-day comradeship, the night-life of an army-corps, in peace or war, are pervaded with a vague similisexual ambient. It would seem that, being himself so robustly male, there is no place in a soldier's heart, or sexual impulse, for anything not vehemently manly. Here advances the theory of the Uranian as a super-virile, not sub-virile, sex.
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The Direct and Indirect Aesthet- ics in Naval and Military Life.
The naval and military atmosphere are highly aesthetic. They are full of colour, romance, life, grace, symmetry. They possess an outward and inward beauty, and dignity in their beauty. Severe practicalities do not deduct from it. In fact many such details expressly add to it. Courage and an aether charged with virile force fuse in the social atmosphere. Beauty of body, the effective uniforms that enhance the physique in constant appeal to the eye as well as to temperaments sensitive to masculine good-looks, the free and often tender intercourse, intimacies of specially fine psychic fibre between men, all make part of the aesthetic attraction.
Historic Examp- les of Soldier-Ur- anians.
The Biblical warrior meets us early with his uranistic personality. We find his type in the swift, passionate love, not to be construed as mere friendship, (if any one knows the Oriental) between David the beautiful boy-warrior—a mere shepherd-lad—and Jonathan; whose mutual attraction and tie is distinctly uranistic. One may surmise from the respective ages of the two, and from the accentuation of Jonathan's share, that it was pederastic on the part of Jonathan, who seems to have fallen in love at sight with the humble peasant-boy. The story is highly suggestive sexually, as we read it in the First and Second Books of Samuel, with its development of a sudden passion which … "knit the soul of Jonathan with the soul of David; and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" The lament of David after the tragedy of Mount Gilboa is in no common strain of even oriental bereavements, with its cry for the love "passing the love of women," a phrase which also suggests the character of Jonathan's sentiment. The story might be a page from Firdausi or from "Antar." Its dionian-uranian colouring is strong. A hint that Jonathan had inherited some traces of similisexualism occours in the Hebrew of the insult of the angry Saul to his heir—"Thou son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own shame, and to the same of thy mother's nakednes".
Classic Greek and Roman War- riors.
We have early some examples of classic homosexuality among soldiers. Going back to the more shadowy epochs and types begin the numerous instances. Achilles and Patroclus, and the legendary Nisus and Euryalus will be remembered. In mythology we have the boy-ravishing Jove, with his rape of the beautiful young Ganymede; Apollo as the lover of Hyacinth; Hercules loving the lad Hylas, and undertaking the famous Twelve Labours because of a passion for Eurystheus. But we meed not enphasize the uranianism of classic fable or of the beginnings of national history. As hellenic civilization grows more definite, the similisexual soldier is a frequent study. In Athenaeus we learn that Agamemnon loved Argynus sexually, the naked beauty of the latter having caught the king's eye irresistibly; and that Antigonus, another royal uranian, was in love with his handsome lute-player, Aristocles. We have Charitonus and Melippus in a sexual relation. The patriotic assassination that so glorified Harmodios and Aristogeiton was in a vengeance for what was a homosexual marriage, we may say, between the two youths—whose uranic love was so virilized. As for Alexander the Great, he is mentioned as intermittently pederastic, by the account of Athenaeus, especially with respect to Bagoas, and to Hephaestion, whose sudden death plunged Alexander into an agony of grief "that exceeded all reason". Pausanias, also Epaminondas (with Kephidorus and Asophicus); Alcibiades—who was at every period of his career an irresistible seducer of men—are other examples. Julius Caesar was not only notoriously the lover of the young King Nicomedes of Bythinia, and of the youthful hostages of Gallic tribes, but of his nephew Octavianus, who later became the homosexual Emperor Augustus. The first great Caesar indeed was so well-known for some of his male amours that the coarse personal taunts which they stimulated under public circumstances, and such attacks as the ribaldry of Catullus, appear never to have been challenged. Julius Caesar presents also the type of a soldier who was passively homosexual, as plain allusions indicate; and the peculiar gentleness of his temperament is significant. That he was dionistic to strong bisexuality of the impulses is pointed out by the historic charge that he was "every man's woman and every woman's man". The subjection of Pompey to homosexual (apparently quite pederastic) favourites is depicted in the account of the great warrior's passion for the young freedman Demetrius—"the person who had most influence with Pompey, a youth not without understanding, but who abused his good-fortune"—although Pompey himself often made young Demetrius less an object of odium "because he submitted without complaint to the caprices of Demetrius", allowing to the petted boy all sorts of uncivil liberties, even with formal guests.
Ancient Teutonic Gothic,Slavon- ian, Turanian, etc., Armies.
The German and Gothic nations were not lacking in warrior uranians. The phrases of Tacitus in speaking of the Germanic tribes are familiar. The fierce regiments of the Turanian hordes that invaded the Danubian basin were homosexual; as notably the Magyar is to-day, especially as a passivist. Slavonian regiments sometimes carried about with them groups of male prostitutes, as did the ancient Scythians. The Arab, the Ottoman, the Moor and the Persian soldiery have always been male-loving. The Janissary and Mameluke regiments were distinctively pederastic. To-day the Turkish soldier rapes a handsome boy even more instinctively than he does a terrified girl, when raiding some helpless village of Macedonia or Bulgaria.
Separator
The Crusaders; The Fighting Or- ders; the Palad- ins and Arthur- ian Chivalry.
The Crusading Epoch brought subtle influences toward a male-loving soldiery in Europe. The Christian cavalier transferred to the East soon became pederastic. Especially is it curious to discover how the vowed Orders of knighthood circumvented the letter of their pledge to be chaste sexually, by their permitting coition with males. Several great military orders tacitly decided that pederasty was materially a lesser sin than to break the vow of continence as to women. Hence the sombre Templar fraternity gradually became riddled with homosexualism, noble and ignoble. The downfall of the Templars indeed was intimately united to that fact. Not less similisexual was the tremendous military Deutscher Orden. Its warlike social story, in Venice and Poland, is filled with uranianism. The Order of Malta has always been a chosen retreat for the uranian aristocrat.
Suggestions of more than merely spiritual bonds between the famous Paladin confraternity can be discerned in the pages of its chroniclers. The same observation applies to some of the passionate intimacies between the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table. Indeed, at this period of chivalry, love for women was continually a mere idealism, expecting and receiving no sexual return. Often it could not, by any stretch of honour, receive such return. Knightly woman-worship was much a matter of lute and lay, a spiritual pose. Malory sounds notes of passion that vaguely make similisexual melody. Later, incontestable representatives of soldier-uranians thicken. It may startle many a reader to know that Gonsalvo de Cordova, General Tilly, Prince Eugène of Savoy, certain princes of Orange, Duke Charles of Burgundy (1433-1477) that great soldier-prince Henri de Condé, the Duc de Vendome, Pietro Duke of Parma, the youthful and brave Conradin of Hohenstaufen and his kinsman Friedrich of Baden, the "blameless" paragon of chivalry, Sir Philip Sidney, Charles XII of Sweden, Gustavus III of Sweden, Peter the Great of Russia, Paul I of Russia, Amadeus of Savoy (who became Pope Felix-Amadeus VIII)—not to mention a wide circle of typical Italian and Spanish "fighting princes" such as Cesare Borgia and great war-making Umbrian and Tuscan and Lombardian chieftains, indubitably were homosexual. The luckless warrior of the Pfalz, Richard Puller von Hohenburg ended his career in a trial and at the stake, as a confessed sodomite, along with his last young paramour, Anton Schärer. The fine soldier Filippo Maria Anglo Visconti, duke of Milan, conspicuous in the early part of the Fifteenth Century was uranistic; one of his special favourites being Scaramuzza, who had been a good-looking young palace-cook.
Modern Soldier- Uranians.
.Of the modern soldier-uranians, without bringing us quite to contemporary army-lists, two high names stand out with special clearness; Frederick the Great, and Alexander I of Russia. Frederick was not only a declared woman-hater, but an undeclared sexual adorer of men, from his youth up. The sentiment coloured all Frederick's life, military or civil. Among such episodes were his relations to Baron Trenck and the ill fated Lieutenant Katte, intimacies with young Count Keyserlingk and other. Their nature—suspected or proved—entered into the furious outbreaks of his father against him, that in Frederick's unhappy youth nearly cost his life. In the dramatic affair of Baron Trenck, the fierce jealousy of Frederick played a more cruel role than his anger at Trenck's intrigue with Princess Amalia. It was partly a homosexual tragedy. Von Katte lost his life through the bond with his Prince. The intimacy with Keyserlingk is an episode of the same kind. Another is that of Count Görz. What Voltaire said of his royal friend's foible was not simply ill-humored irony. Frederick's list of male amours extended even to stalwart members of the famous body-guard of young soldier-giants. At the examinations for admission to the robust regiment, the King made notes that he was given to consulting on—other occasions. Frederick was indeed, precisely the princely Hohenzollern to be homosexual. The trait is special, along with the diversified talents, in the famous royal line. It has offered later examples; including exalted—not to say august—ones, of very contemporary Hohenzollern family-history.
Alexander I of Russia was. unequivocally homosexual. Of great physical beauty, adored by the women, he was in youth, and he remained, as glacial to love of their sex as Frederick the Great, or more so. The many similisexual episodes in Alexander's life, in campaign or court, justified the pointed remark of Napoleon that the statuesque Emperor of Russia was "the slyest and handsomest of all the Greeks". The reader can consult such memoirs as the Potocka series for items. Alexander's mysticism of temperament, as he grew older, is not inconsistent with his similisexualism.
Was Napoleon himself ever tinged with uranianism?—he, that continual amateur of women, that brutally sexual Dionian, when in mature soldierly individuality! One can hardly entertain such a suspicion at first thought. Or is one again confronted with the eternal, inconsistent uranistic throb of dionistic natures? It has been affirmed that Napoleon in his humbler soldier-days, when Lieutenant (or Captain) Buonaparte, had a homosexual intimacy with a young officer of his regiment. Probably the truth or falsity of this vague charge will never be determined. But certainly Napoleon had no strong moral theories against the homosexual instinct. He was a Latin, as well as a man of wide philosophic horizons. His Napoleonic Code avoids carefully any punishment of sexual intercourse between men, except where violence, public decency, or debauchment of minors, are concerned. Probably Napoleon's attitude to the topic was similar to his mocking remark when told of the habits of bestiality (with a mare) on the part of a certain gallant officer of the army; "So? And what, pray, have I to do with his—love-affairs?"
The hero of Khartoum, General Gordon, a soldier-like type, if ever one was, and a devout almost superstitious, Christian, was Uranian. Incidents of this inner life of Gordon used to be narrated in his Chinese days and later. His bond with Lord Arthur Hamilton was of the truly hellenic colour. An Uranian-nature has long been attributed to another contemporary English soldier whose name is linked popularly with Egyptian campaigning; along with his exceptionally persistent "woman-hating".
Within a few weeks of the time when these pages are written, England, and Continental Europe were shocked by a notable loss to the British army, and by a melancholy social tragedy—the death in Paris of Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald, who died a suicide in consequence of uranistic intimacies, while commanding officer of the British forces stationed in Ceylon. Personal friends of Macdonald long had been aware of his homosexualism. In course of his long service, there had been relationships that were open secrets. But in Afghanistan, India, the Sudan and South Africa alike, Macdonald had fought with great distinction. Clandestinely pederastic, after being stationed in Ceylon, occured incidents in connection with native youths that invited official investigation. The affair might nevertheless have escaped further consideration had not a member of the legislative council in Ceylon brought charges. The governor of Ceylon judiciously attempted to suppress them, but the effort was vain. Summoned to London to answer accusations against his private character at the War Office, Macdonald made a hurried and secret journey to England. He had interviews with a few friends, including Lord Roberts. Macdonald was urged to face the accusations; "they would be dismissed Certain unfortunate aspects impaired his courage, whatever might have been his best course. During the last days of March, 1903, in incognito, he took up his quarters in a Paris hotel. One morning he was found dead in his room, having shot himself. The episode excited much grief in Great Britain. Indeed, British hypocrisy in speaking or writing of homosexualism, on this occasion was considerably laid aside. The public and the press paid high tribute to the deceased soldier. Some of the English and Scotch journals spoke of him as the victim of unnecessary official scrutiny uinto personal affairs." A public monument to the dead warrior has been erected in Scotland. There was much more temperate allusion to the trait which had brought Macdonald to death than in any previous affair of the sort in England.
A curious case of uranianism, coincidental with a soldier's profession and temperament, occured in Commandant J— R—, in charge of an important army-station in the western part of the United States. Commandant R— in no sense neglected his military responsibilities. But he had homosexual intimacies with younger or older soldiers, according to lively report. He also was fond of attiring himself like a woman, when in his officer's quarters, yet would have none of womankind round about him. A small literature of his eccentricities has appeared.
In Modern Mili- tary Life "Love levels Ranks.
The diffusion of uranism in the officer's life today, points out the hellenic fact of the soldier-nature as still "man-loving physically as well as spiritually. An uranian Mars seeks union with the male not perhaps because he is effeminate, but because too virile to tolerate what is womanish. Certainly Uranianism is enormously prevalent in the armies of Germany, Austria, Russia and France, as well as in the East. Certain military romancists, such as Pierre Loti and Georges Eckhoud, have expressed this in their stories, and many works on military service on the Continent have referred to it. The English, French, German, Italian and other regiments in Africa and Asia, on foreign duty, have aided in cultivating the taste. Occasionally grave scandals have occurred, through some sudden discovery of homosexualism in a garrison or caserne. In France and Germany and Austria several such dramas may he fresh in the minds of reader of this study. The English army has had its share, whereat an aghast British public has gasped in horror and disbelief. The British tongue can hardly stammer its disgust as to such "unnatural offenses", in mess or plebeian circles, pretending to know nothing of what is tolerated, right and left. A famous old-time scandal, dragged into glaring publicity,—serving as type of such regimental and garrison uranism among officers—was the Augustus Cornwall esclandre, in Dublin. The "De Cobain Affair" was notable in the annals of such explosions. Ruined careers and accounts of self-destroyed existences usually follow their publicity. Of military prostitution in the ranks, as a vastly broadened practice in England and on the Continent, a regular institution, will be said something presently.
The Tragic Side Here, as in Civil Life.
German army-centers fairly reek with pederasty, in all regimental grades. A melancholy proportion of "unexplained suicides", unaccountable disappearings, and so on, in military life, are to be traced to homosexual undercurrents; exactly as runs the dark story in civil life. Within a few years, the phrases "severe nervous illness", or "suffering from incurable headaches" have passed.into the cant of the journals when a young officer's suicide is reported. Sometimes the words mean the end of a dire struggle to explain Nature—to excuse it. Sometimes they mean the need of excusing closest associates, with a scandal hanging over many heads. Sometimes the cause is blackmail. More common than one would expect, is the fact that the young officer, overloaded with debts, has agreed to a marrriage as arranged by his friends. His bride's dowry is to set him free from creditors. He accepts the project, but presently is unable to face the physical union. His horror feminae is not to be fought off, he takes his life. Another element of such suicides in the brotherhood of arms, is the sense of broken ties of the garrison-life henceforth to be solitary, for some regimental "friend" of the benedick. There are many shades and degrees of the uranistic sentiment in such "unsoldierly" mysteries.
Often one meets with a newspaper-reference similar to this one, translated from a journal of the very week in which the authour is writing this chapter:
"No further light can be thrown as yet on the suicide of Lieutenant R— B— last Sunday. The personal and professional affairs of the deceased young man were in good order, and no family matters exist that explain his want of interest in life. The letter to his brother K— B—, in F—, in which Lieutenant B— spoke of himself as the victim of "an incurable nervous disease from which he had long suffered", is contradicted by the dead man's having been examined about four weeks ago for a life-insurance policy, with an excellent report. No one has heard him speak of any sort of nervous or other ill-health. The letter which Lieutenant B— left, addressed to his friend Captain O—, the latter declines to make known. Captain O— wishes it understood that there is no ground for the report that affairs with the other sex are complicated in Lieutenant B—'s death. Lieutenant B— was of most regular habits; did not frequent the society of the opposite sex except under ordinary social conditions. He had many warm friends. The deliberation of the suicide, makes the affair mysterious".
Or take the following:
"Captain F. N. of the O— Regiment,—now at G—, after a visit to the Franciscan Church last Sunday returned to his lodgings in—Strasse, and after sitting at his writing-desk, put a revolver to his breast and was found by his orderly, lying by the desk, dead, some hours, later … A letter to a fellow-officer declared his intention of making away with himself. The suicide was evidently quite clear-minded. Captain N— was a young man, of regular habits, and retiring in manner. He was often called the "woman-hater" in view of his avoidance of "gay" society in G—. His health was good; his family affairs and money-matters were entirely in order. There is, in short, no accounting for his act. The friend to whom the letter mentioned was delivered declines to give information as to its contents."
In a garrison-town in Italy, two or three winters ago, occurred the suicide of a high officer of the Italian Service; an incident which awakened regret and surprise in Italian army-circles, owing to the high character and distinction of the deceased. He had fine social qualities; there was a want of motive to explain his act. V— had been in his usual spirits, had mixed freely with his friends on the preceding days of the same week, and was just promoted. He blew out his brains in his room, one afternoon, leaving on the table a four-line letter saying—"The disease which afflicts me prevents my dragging out this life of mine any longer. Please notify my brother, with due caution." No "disease" existed. The fact that the dead man had been homosexual, and the victim of a melancholy long-concealed from human scrutiny, was afterwards known. He had given up existence in a fit of neurasthenic despair.
Before the close of the thirties, in the nineteenth century, occurred in Vienna, a chain of episodes in army-life, based almost wholly on uranistic facts. How much so was known to few persons outside of a trio directly involved. Among the Magyar Imperial Life-Guards in Vienna, was a certain young Count U—, a member of an excellent family as well as of an aristocratic circle. Count U— was of a physical beauty which made him the object of feminine admiration in half the drawingrooms of Vienna. Complaisant proposals were lavished on this Apollo of one of the most picturesque regiments in Europe. He was a Don Juan as to the women. Nevertheless, Count U— was a Dionian-Uranian. He maintained a sexual relation with a young brother-officer in Budapest, a famous swordsman and rider, of notable attractiveness. Between the two young men came a difference. The fidus Achates of Count U— was a declared woman-hater, entirely homosexual. But in course of time, Count H—, apparently reverting to the normal, fell in love with a young and beautiful girl. It became a question of his marriage. The Count offered his hand and name. Fraulein X— accepted him. Unhappily one obstacle to the marriage existed. The young lady was of Jewish stock, the daughter of a wealthy financier. At that time the local prejudice against such marriages, on the part of aristocratic Vienna, was more sharp than it is to-day. The engagement might however have been acceptable to the U— family, but for a direct intervention, made by the friend of Count U—. He had been willing to tolerate Count U—'s passing flames, but the idea of the marriage was unendurable. Whatever he could do to strengthen the opposition of the family of Count U— he did. But he maneuvered this so adroitly that Count U— had no idea of any such intrigue. The jealous soldier played his rôle with the finesse of an actor. He could not succeed in bringing the parents of Count U— to a definite refusal to receive the young lady into their intimacy, should the marriage occur, until about a week prior to its date. Some of the members of the U— family had declared their willingness to be present, but others had not. The night before the date set for the marriage, Count U— visited his parents, having every reason to suppose that displeasure as any obstruction was past. He found the situation changed. His father nor mother would neither be present at the ceremony, nor under any circumstances would receive the bride socially. A violent scene ensued. There was no mistaking the obstinacy of the family. Count U— went to his rooms, and shot himself dead. The young officer who had. been the real agency of the resolution of the U— family, was overwhelmed at a result which he had not foreseen. In remorse and grief he followed his friend to the grave, by putting a bullet through his own heart on the evening after the funeral of Count U—. He left a note to a well-known officer, in which he confessed the sexual history. The young lady, by the by, survived the tragedy, and presently married—into her own faith. The U— family, it is of interest to note, included more than one abnormal member. Another member, Countess U— was always believed to be an Uraniad, so masculine was her individuality, in spite of the fact that she married and had children. Her separation from her husband was supposed to refer to this element. She also, when in middle life, without any obvious reason, committed suicide suddenly in a foreign land where, as a sort of interesting amazon, she long had resided.
Uranianism in the French "Lost Legion."
Strange tales of Uranianism are met in the gloomy annals of humble service in foreign countries by Asiatic and African regiments, with European recruits of unknown but oviously good antecedents. We encounter in such records the Uranian who has fled from recognition at home, outlawed by some homosexual experiences. The rank-and-file of such a Foreign Legion as that of the French service in North Africa contains soldiers of aristocratic social station, whose lives have been ruined by homosexualism. Such riddlesome "men without a country" suddenly appear, and enlist themselves in wearisome, dangerous services. Frequently they are well-educated, brave, unable to "hide the gentleman" in them. Their lips are sealed to explanation of why they have expatriated themselves. Such books as Georges d'Esparbès studies of the Franco-Algerian service touch on this aspect. Many such volunteers gladly fling away not only names and social grades but their lonely lives, without a word to anyone. The sands of the desert or the grass of a jungle cover the bones of many social cidevants who have danced in Court balls in London or Wien, or who have headed the hunt across the Campagna on a Spring day, in the pride of fashion, wealth and blue-blood.
A sanguinary little drama, based on uranism in the ranks was played in a Galizian barracks one night, a few years ago. A young infantry soldier had during many months maintained homosexual intercourse with another recruit. The friend took a fancy to another soldier, and avoided his former comrade. The latter discovered the situation. A fierce quarrel ensued, Finally the deserted man threatened to kill the deserter and anybody else concerned. In the middle of the night came a shot, then a scene of terror. The soldier had crept stealthily out of bed, had taken his carbine, and had slipped over to where his "false" comrade lay. He fired at him in the dark. As the roomful of sleeping recruits was roused by the report, they leaped up, striking lights. The lad saw that he had missed his mark. He began firing right and left wildly—twice aimed at the rival soldier. In the flickering light he merely grazed him. The youth was secured by his half-naked comrades, and was shut up, out of his senses, till morning should come. During the few hours of that imprisonment he contrived nearly to make way with himself. He was tried for attempt at murder, but refused to explain his motives, till he was put under medical examination. Then he confessed the affair.
A Romancist of Military Uranian- ism: Alexander von Sternberg.
Belles-lettres have not been silent as to the homosexual soldier. The French novelist "Pierre Loti" mentioned, introduces such an element in his tales and sketches, though Loti conveys more homosexuality in his sea-stories. Short episodes, in various familiar fictions, are uranian enough to merit attention. One such occurs in Tolstoi's "Anna Karénina", when the hero of Anna's unfortunate romance, Wronsky, notices the entrance of two Russian fellow-officers, into a restaurant, one older, the other a young type; who are indicated as notorious for a pederastic relationship so much so that Wronsky avoids their society. But another Continental authour, now many years dead and almost forgotten, Alexander (von Ungern) Sternberg (d. 1868) rises par excellence among- portraitists of some of the most sympathetic aspects of soldierly uranianism. He has presented many phases of it. Particularly is this the mainspring of psychologic study in one of Sternberg's novels of the Napoleonic era, entitled "Jena and Leipzig". We find there the homosexual tie that unites two young officers, who begin their friendship-love with their confinement in a hospital after the Battle of Jena, and die together in the struggle at Leipzig. Along with this military novel may be mentioned von Stenberg's story, "Die Beiden Schützen", which has also a soldier-uranic atmosphere; the narrative of a tragic sexual love between two young Berlin recruits at the time of the so-called "Berlin Revolution" in 1848.
A brief résumé of these two military stories by Sternberg is timely here, as being typical. In "Jena and Leipzig". Franz von Selbitz of aristocratic birth, loves passionately but in troublous secrecy, his companion-in-arms. Andreas Walt, of humbler social station, but who is a sort of Antinous in his classic beauty. Unluckily Walt has not been at all attracted to von Selbitz—not even as a friend. The sense of jealousy has worked bitterly on von Selbitz. Precisely on the night before the battle of Jena, von Selbitz challenges Walt to a duel, in sheer nervous irritation. But the duel cannot be fought; duty to their country postpones any private quarrels in the army. Next day both young men are dangerously wounded. They are left on the field, near each other. Franz von Selbitz crawls over to the side of the man whom he loves more than his own life, and at the risk of his chances of surviving his own wounds, he binds up those of Walt. He is carried to an hospital, along with von Selbitz, each of them quite unconscious from exhaustion. Arrived at the hospital, Andreas is presently brought out of danger: but Franz is thought to be beyond hope, though he has been brought to a certain degree of improvement. He is perfectly rational, and has still the relics of former strength. Aware of his critical state, he begs that, no matter at what risk, he may be allowed to speak once with Andreas Walt. Bandaged and weak, Andreas consents. He makes his way to the bedside of von Selbitz. The following scene occurs:
Andreas heard Franz's weak voice, and undecided what to do, whether to enter the room or to withdraw, he stood in the door.
"Andreas Walt?" called the sick man.
"It is I", replied Andreas, without coming nearer the couch. Not till the other had stretched out his hand to him did Andreas Walt sit down on the bed. Lying there, Franz pulled aside the paper screen which muffled the light; and the rays fell full on the face and figure of Walt. Franz fastened his gaze on Walt, and did not turn his eyes away even on meeting the still unfriendly, almost hostile, look of Walt.
"In what can I serve you, Herr von Selbitz?", asked Walt coldly.
"I am a dying man" replied Selbitz, in a low voice. Then he paused. Again Walt said nothing, and a long silence ensued. Then suddenly Franz seized the hand of Andreas Walt in his own; covered it with tears and kisses; and cried "Andreas! Can you forgive me?" "Oh, comrade!" answered Andreas, flushing a blood-red, and drawing away his hand in his surprise and embarrassment. But Franz, lifiting himself up, continued. "If to night is to be my last, Andreas, so much the more reason for you to know that—l love you". "You—you speak so in your fever", replied his late antagonist, bewildered.
"No, Andreas! By God and by His Eternal Grace, I tell you the truth! Be cold—be proud if so you must be, after I humiliate myself before you. Yes, Andreas only a glowing love, hidden from all the world, not understood by even myself—this has made me treat you as I did. Know now that in my bosom lives a quite other heart; as long ago you would have known—found out under other circumstances. I tormented you, I insulted you, only because I loved you! I could not endure it any longer—that you were so cold to me, made no more of me than of other comrades. Yes—I have felt as if I would kill you, rather than find you so cold to me!"
"I cannot understand—"
"Listen, Andreas! When I saw you for the first time—when you first came into my room, as I sat alone and dull-hearted on my bed that day, a ray of sunshine fell through the old torn curtain. It fell on your face, on your breast and shoulder; and something cried out in me, "That man belongs to you! He is your brother your friend! Without him you ought not to live, you cannot live!…" Only because I could not throw myself upon your neck and kiss you, did I treat you so ill then and afterward … Oh, if you could have known that though I have mocked you in the presence of others, I have crept in the night to the door of your room, only just to hear the sound of your breathing while you were sleeping!—my heart tortured with dreams that perhaps you might die suddenly! that so I might be left alone, in cruel misery, without you! What a folly mine has been!… Point out to me, Andreas, any other such heart as mine! And so at last in my mad torment, ever more wreched, did I cry out, "This must come to an end! either by his bullet to my heart, or by mine to his! When he or I are dying, then, then, I can tell him all! Death shall unite us, since Life cannot! And so now you know all: forgive me, if you can".
Franz had turned his face to the wall, the agony of his wound overcoming him. But Andreas Walt knelt down beside him, and said in a tone that showed how much he was moved at this strange confession, "Herr von Selbitz all this seems to me so very strange. I beg you to feel sure that I have never had the least idea of—what you tell me!"
"Oh, call me "Thou", not "You"! exclaimed Franz, "you can do that now—for am I not dying!"
"I will get the surgeon—"
"No, no! Stay thou with me! Be thou my physician! See, see, Andreas! I am quitting this mortal life, and never have l known what is its highest joy. I am twenty years old; and yet never have I come into touch with what men call love for woman! God has kept my heart open only for—friendship! Thou, thou, art mine all! my life—my love! Here, now, on the edge of my grave, I throw off the unnatural mask, for now I shall have dared to clasp thee with the arms of love—I can go Home satisfied."
Andreas felt something like a well-stream flowing to his breast from the heart of this dying comrade. All other emotions had fled; bending over Franz von Selbitz he exclaimed "My friend! My brother! For, so do I greet thee!"
"—In death and in life!" whispered Franz.
Von Selbitz fell back on his bed, and lay there still, in a swoon of exhaustion. Andreas summoned help, forgetting his own perrilous condition, living only for the friend who had given his very soul up to him, as so unexpected an offering …
That little attic-room, where Franz had been lying, must needs now shelter both these friends. The Angel of Death hovered over first one of the pair, then the other; he touched their young foreheads, but his cold finger was not laid upon their hearts. They grew well of their wounds slowly—slowly. But by the coming of the Spring, they could leave their sick-room … Their comrades greeted them gladly, once more of their old circle. Often, often did talk busy itself with the strange change—two men once such bitter enemies now such affectionate friends".
The remainder of the novel deals with the sacrifices of Franz von Selbitz as he finds that Andreas Walt, who is a Dionian-Uranian at most, loves a young girl and wishes to marry. The torments of wounded hopes, of jealousy, of separation, all are of course inevitable to this situation. Yet Franz, who is the superiour nature, realizes that respect for the more normal temperament of Andreas, and regard for his happiness, alike demand that the marriage must come. "I have suffered frightfully, Andreas", he writes … "I have battled with my heart, I have won. Go, love this woman, marry her! Sooner or later that would have to be. I have seen the girl, and though she does not seem to me worthy thee (for when could any woman be worthy of a man?)—still, she is not unsuited to thee, Andreas. So—farewell forever! I cannot live near thee, knowing that I now have only half thy heart. Nothing on earth is there more wretched than a half-heart! I want either all my heaven; or else all hell" … The separation however is maintained with difficulty. One meeting between the pair of friends is particularly moving. The military course of the story is resumed. The two men are ordered to Leipzig. In that great battle they are both severely wounded. Franz von Selbitz dies in the arms of Walt, just as he has long desired to do; while Walt survives Franz only during a few hours.
In Sternberg's other tale, "Die Beiden Schützen" ("The Two Shots") are again two protagonists, both young men; the brown-eyed Tony Wickye, a Neuchatellois, and Friedrich Forst, from far-away Pomerania. The deep affection between these two, and their solemn pledge that it shall never fail of anything in life and in death, are sketched in a succession of manly and graceful incidents, during their soldier-service. Once, when Tony overstays his furlough, his alert friend contrives to transfer the punishment to himself, and so willingly suffers arrest for Tony. Friedrich Forst is, in fact, ever the more unselfish nature of the pair—more perfectly uranistic, intersexual. A feminine pleasure in self-sacrifice marks his sentiment. Forst has, too, a portent that he is to die early. One night, while possessed by a sort of revery, when on watch-duty, he counts the grated bars of a cemeterygate near him, and finding them to be eighteen and a half, he feels strongly the conviction that he will not reach his nineteenth year. More than ever, in that sad fantasy, does his soul go out toward his beloved Tony Wickye. A few days later, Friedrich is mortally wounded—horribly—in a skirmish. Every second is torture. In his agony he implores Tony Wickye to take his musket, and to shoot him, then and there, simply to end such sufferings. He knows that he cannot be healed. He would fain die by the beloved hand of Wickye. After a direful moral and sentimental battle with himself, and refusals to his friend, the tragic vow of their friendship conquers Tony. He obeys; the shot from his hand puts Friedrich Forst, out of misery.
Such are some of von Sternberg's military stories in the intersexual key. Reference to those of other sort will occur elsewhere in this volume.
A Citation from De Amicis.
In the "Autobiography" of Edmondo De Amicis, where that charming Italian writer is describing his boyhood with its vivid sentimental undercurrents, he depicts his intense admiration for a comely young bersagliere, an episode not free from suggestions that the soldier had uranistic instincts. The narrative, however, may be read simply as a charming study of how a temperamental admiration for soldiers, and a sort of innocent boyish "flirtation" with one, can influence a sensitive lad's inner life for a time, and be more or less reciprocated by the friend of maturer age. De Amicis writes:
"My mind was forcibly diverted from Latin grammar by a passion which had a distinct effect on my whole life, finding vent fourteen years later in a book which marked the first stage of a journey that may end, perchance, with these pages. I refer to my passion for soldiers; or, to speak more accurately, for the bersaglieri who formed the only garrison of our city. If they had been infantry of the line, I am certain that my enthusiasm would have been less; since my devotion, though due in part to the warlike spirit of the time and my own ardent nature, was also partly due to the beauty of the uniform, the agility of the manœuvres and the personal prestige of these "Children of Alessandro La Marmora". Never I am sure did lad of my years entertain a more ardent passion; though many have been much more strongly inclined than I towards a military career. It was a real monomania, not to be cured by exhortation, reproof or punishment. On every holiday, and on other days too, both before and after school, I ran away from home at all hours in order to follow the cocks' plumes to the training held, to the rifle-practice, to the "athletics". Among my many likings, I made one friendship, which remains among the dearest recollections of my childhood. There was a trumpet-corporal—a native of Mortara if I am not mistaken—a young fellow of medium height, lithe and robust, a typical bersagliere. His features were strong and wore a serious expression, but he was full of kindness; his manners were simple and pleasant; his name was Martinotti. He took a fancy to me through having seen me plunging along to the sound of his trumpet, with my tongue lolling from my mouth. We scraped acquaintance on the training-field; then we began taking walks together during my leisure hours in the neighborhood of my home. He treated me like a man, which flattered my vanity and enhanced my affectionate gratitude. He spoke to me of his family, his career, his superior officers; told me all the garrison-gossip, giving me all particulars with greatest gravity, while I listened with the most devoted attention. At home, my one, theme of conversation was Corporal Martinotti, whom my brothers to tease me dubbed "the General", He wanted me to say "tu" when I spoke to him, but I never got up sufficient courage. To be seen on the street at his side was my pride, and when he took me to the café to drink soda-water, I felt a halo settle round my head: I should not have been more set up had Count Cavour himself invited me. He called me by my Christian name, but abbreviated it because it seemed to him too long as it was, and hard to pronounce. He turned it into "Mondo" or "Mondino" …
My adoration for him reached such a pitch, that I imitated his walk and accent, and whistled from morning to night the marches which he most frequently called upon his trumpeters to play. I do not remember how long this happiness of mine endured; I know that I expected it to last forever—as if Martinotti were likely to live his life out in our city because it would hurt my feelings to have him go! But the end came suddenly.
One night toward dusk, at the hour of "retreat", meeting me on the ramparts, he said:—
"Did you know that I am off to-morrow, with tho battalion, Mondino?" And seeing that I did not understand, he added—"Off for the Crimea".
People had been talking about the Crimean War for some time, but somehow it had never occurred to me that he might be ordered there. I could not find my voice. He smiled at my emotion, bis eyes full of compassion, then tried to console me by saying—"I've good hopes of escaping the Russians. They won't want to kill us all. And if I get off, it's quite likely that I shall come back here. Courage, Mondino! We shall meet again some day".
I could not keep back my tears. He looked at me for a little time—earnestly, gravely,—then turned and ran away, as though he had heard the sudden call of one of his superior officers. I went home sad at heart, and had hardly crossed the threshold when I told my mother the mournful tidings, broken by a sob, "Corporal Martinotti … is going to the war".
"Poor fellow!" she exclaimed; then added, to console me, that I would better go and wave him a farewell at the station.
Next evening I rushed to the station; but it was empty. The battalion had left in the morning!
I stood there awhile, gazing with tearful eyes at the shining rails along which my friend had been borne away, following him in my fancy to that far-distant country, full of terror and mystery, from which I did not believe that he would ever return …
What I do remember is that I often thought about my corporal, so far away; and that after bis departure I ceased to have anything to do with the few bersaglieri who still remained, as if he had taken with him all the poetry of his corps and all the enthusiasm of my heart."
The account of how by-and-by Martinotti came back, lively, well and gay, to renew the intimacy with "Mondino" is equally suggestive.
Two Other Liter- ary References.
A recent American book entitled "The Spirit of Old West Point", presents the military souvenirs of General Morris Schaff, of the United States army, in a volume remarkable for grace of literary style and sympathie sentiment In its authour's pen-portraits of early friends in the famous Military Academy (the Woolwich, or Saint-Cyr, of the United States) are to be noted many delicate suggestions of the uranian emotion in young and soldierly comrades. Indeed the accent of a manly similisexualism of psychic quality pervades the record. To many Anglo-Saxons it will make a peculiarly subtle appeal, even if its sub-uranistic accent may not be intelligently appreciated. Especially in its elegiac passages, it is eloquent of the homosexual thrill in young hearts that beneath uniforms can beat so passionally for each other.
In the novelette "Imre: A Memorandum", by the present writer, a homosexual romance that has something of a military atmosphere—the hero of the little tale being a young Hungarian officer who is an inborn Uranian—there occur several references to the struggles of a soldier nature, unclear as to just what may be the troublous sexual quality of its regard for other comrades-in-arms, dreading detection of the mysterious feeling, hiding all its promptings day by day in regimental life; and finally tormented by an almost insupportable struggle with a passion for a brother-officer who never suspects the character of the younger man's regard for him. Hourly terror lest his homosexuality should be guessed, makes Lieutenant Imre von N— seem unemotional, reserved and unappreciative. The following passage is near the close of the story, where is reviewed Lieutenant Imre's difficult social policy toward warm friendships:
"Twice Imre had been on the point of suicide. And though there had been experiences in the Military Academy, and certain much later ones, to teach him that he was not unique in Austria-Hungary, or elsewhere in the world, still Imre unluckily had got from them (as is too often the hap of the Uranian) chiefly the sense of how widely despised, mocked, and loathed is the Uranian Race. Also how sordid and debasing are the average associations of the homosexual kind; how likely to be wanting in idealism, in exclusiveness, in those pure and manly influences which ought to be bound up in them and to radiate from them! He had grown to have a horror of similisexual types, of all contacts with them. And yet, until lately, they could not he torn entirely nut of his life. Most Uranists know why!"
"Still, they had been so expelled, finally. The turning-point had come with Karvaly. It. meant the story of the development of a swift, admiring- friendship from the younger soldier toward the older. But alas! this had gradually become a fierce, despairing homosexual love. This, at its height, had been as destructive of Imre's peace as it was hopeless. Of course, it was impossible of confession to its object. Karvaly was no narrow intellect; his affection for Imre was warm. But he would never have understood, not even as some sort of a diseased illusion, this sentiment in Imre. Much less would he have tolerated it for an instant. The inevitable rupture of their whole intimacy would have come with Imre's betrayal of his passion. So he had done wisely to hide every throb from Karvaly. How sharply Karvaly had on one occasion expressed himself on masculine homosexuality, Imre cited to me with other remembrances. At the time of the vague scandal about the ex-officer Clement, whom Imre and I had met, Imre had asked Karvaly, with a fine carelessness,—'Whether he; believed that there was any scientific excuse for such a sentiment?' Karvaly answered, with the harsh conviction of a dionistic temperament that has never so much as paused to think of the matter as a question in psychology … "If I found that you cared for another man that way, youngster, I should give you my best revolver, and tell you to but a bullet through your brains within an hour! Why, if I found that you thought of me so, I should brand you in the Officer's Casino tonight, and shoot you myself, at ten paces, tomorrow morning!… Men are not to live when they turn beasts … Oh, damn your doctors and scientists! A man's a man, and a woman's a woman! You can't mix up their emotions like that".
"The dread of Karvaly's detection, the struggle with himself to subdue passion, not merely to hide it, and along with these nerve-wearing solicitudes, the sense of what the suspicion of the world about him would inevitably bring on his head, had put Imre, little by little, into a sort of panic. He maintained an exaggerated attitude of safety that had wrought on him unluckily, in many a valuable social relation. He wore his mask each and every instant, resolving to make it his natural face before himself! Having, discovered, through intimacy with Karvaly, how a warm friendship on the part of the homosexual temperament, over and over takes to itself the complexion of homosexual love—the one emotion constantly likely to rise in the other and to blend itself inextricably into its alchemy—Imre had simply sworn to make no intimate regimental friendship again! This, without showing himself in the least unfriendly; indeed with his being more hail-fellow-well-met than otherwise with his comrades in the A—Infantry."
"But there Imre stopped! He bound his warm heart in a chain, the vowed tepid fraternity to the whole world, he assisted no advances of warm, particular regard from any comrade. In his soldier-life gradually he became that friend of everybody in general who is the friend of nobody in particular! He lived in a state of perpetual defence in his regiment, as in whatever else was social to him at Szent-Istvánhely. So surely as he admired another man—would gladly have won his generous and virile affection—Imre turned away from that man! He covered this morbid state of self-inclusion, this solitary life (such it was, apart from the relatively short intimacy with Karvaly) with laughter and a most artistic semblance of brusqueness; of manly preoccupation with private affairs. Above all with the skilful cultivation of his repute as a Lothario who was nothing if not sentimental and absorbed in—woman! This is possibly the most common device, as it is the securest, on the part of an Uranian. Circumstances favoured Imre in it; and he gave it its full mystery. Its cruel irony was often almost humorous to Imre".
Separator
Military Prostitution.
To the important topic of male prostitution in general an extended reference will occur in this book presently. But at this point must be noticed specifically military prostitution: particularly by young soldiers in large cities and garrisons.
This phase of "the social evil" has become enormously diffused and obvious in Europe, as in the Orient. The common soldier, likewise the soldier of better than humble grade, in almost every country, every military administration and garrison town, exercises largely clandestine prostitution. The motives are various.
In some cases the young soldier is more or less constitutionally homosexual. He likes coition only with a male, and would seek that, even could he not expect to be paid for it, like any other harlot. In a proportion of examples he is bi-sexual. Perhaps he is too poor to give himself heterosexual relief through a brothel; or else is afraid of disease. In another proportion, the soldier is not at all homosexual. He sells his body to a stranger, or regular patron, simply as an easy though rather irksome avocation. A mercenary motive is probably the most common. In those countries where the standing armies are large, compulsory service long, and the soldier in the ranks has but meagre pay, he takes to prostitution to increase his narrow exchequer. He finds that he does not get enough to satisfy his proverbially good appetite; unless he in an orderly or has won over a sympathetic cook-maid. He cannot keep in his pocket the few extra coppers for such trivial luxuries as his cigarettes, his glass of beer, his little stake at a game of cards, his evening in a cheap seat in a theater; not to speak of possessing cash for female society of an easy no-virtue sort. Sometimes he cannot without economy even keep his uniform and appointments in smart order, or pay for his postage-stamps to write to his people or his sweetheart, unless his family allows him a modest fund. That aid is not usual from humble households. He cannot make a penny for himself, so long as his military "time" lasts. Even as an officer's servant, he has but derisory wages. Soldier-life, the duties of barracks and drill are tedious or hateful to him. He wants diversion when the day is over; but many a time he cannot allow himself anything more amusing than a walk, or a free seat in a public park, till he returns to his caserne. On holidays, he often does not know what to do with himself, to kill the idle time.
But the stratophilic civilian is always near, to prevent a wholly unprofitable use of some of the recruit's hours of freedom. We will suppose the lad tall, well-built, robust and from eighteen to twenty years old. He is probably not sexually "innocent". If he be so, and hears what is said among his fellows in the barracks, he soon loses in moral sensitiveness. As was said, he may not be—often he is not—a born homosexual. But he allows himself to drift into the practice of sitting in public resorts where strangers come; in the parks and restaurant-gardens, well-known for equivocal usefulness. He goes to certain baths, to cheap cafés and theaters, of like repute; letting friendly gentlemen scrape acquaintance with him. In a park or suburb, comes the classic aid of a cigarette. Complaisantly he "takes walks" into secluded corners of the place with affectionate strangers, or gets into the way of accompanying them to their lodgings, for an hour or so. The price of giving his physical beauty and sexual vigor, even if with no good-will for the act, to the embraces of some casual homosexual client brings him more money in half an hour than he is likely to receive as his whole week's pay, even at the low quid pro quo of two or three marks, a couple of florins, three or four lire, or a couple of half crowns, for his amiabilities. The "Trade" aspect of it grows on him.—"Why not?" he asks himself. The commerce in a large town becomes easy, successful, and it is practically undetected. He soon discovers that whatever is suspected among his companions of him or of each other, little is said. So many of his fellows engage in the same by-trade of an evening! And as indicated, while soldier-prostitutes may vastly prefer sexual intercourse with women, and may make homosexual complaisances pay for normal gratifications, still, they are likely to lose repugnance to homosexual coitions. Many a young soldier grows into preferring it; he literally first "endures then embraces" it. Lasting intimacies are formed between soldier-prostitutes and civilians, when a particular regiment is stationed long in the same city. It is a curious fact that, while all sorts of soldiery are given to homosexualism, and furnish amateur prostitutes for the pleasure of the civilian, the cavalry, the artillery and the hussar regiments offer the majority. Various explanations of this are given.
Mischief to the Soldier-Prosti- tute.
The danger to the morale of a young soldier is obvious. He is not so likely to impair his vigour for duty, as to become morally inert and unambitious. Mercenary, cynical by such a resource, he degrades himself, to degrade others. He laughs at the shy complaints of new boy-recruits in want of money, and tells them how to "make something" by a twilight stroll in Hyde Park or the Prater; by an half-hour in the promenade of a music-hall in London or Rome or Berlin; in a bath-house, or wherever else. But, far worse, such circumstances readily put the soldier-prostitute into associations with the directly criminal classes of a metropolis. When his military-term is over, he has developed toward a professional prostitute of the lowest civilian-class; toward thief, housebreaker, forger, blackmailer and what not else. With degraded uranistic feelings, not inborn but cultivated, he loses an idea of marriage, of raising a family. Thus his country's census is the poorer. Many a young soldier-prostitute of the famous Stadt-Park alleys in Vienna, of the Thiergarten in Berlin, of the boulevard of an Italian town, thinks that he will forget all such sexual chapters of garrison-days when he is mustered out, and at home.—"It is just a part of one's life now, for me as for thousands of others!" But the consequences may be deplorable. He may not "forget"—anything so potent toward his ruin.
Why the Uranian Affects the Sol- dier-Prostitute.
The Uranian patron in a vast array prefers the soldier's "services"; is what we have termed "philostratic"—or specifically soldier-loving—in his sexual impulses.
There are practical reasons, even when the patron is of far superior social grade. The young artillerist, cavalryman, or what else, is soldierly, well-dressed, and generally gains a fine physique. Often he has distinct beauty of face and figure. In Italy where lower classes are strikingly beautiful, to which attraction is to be added the refinement of the Italian proletariat and the pleasure that many a young Italian soldier takes in homosexual intercourse, the military prostitute is specially engaging. He is a marked contrast to the dingy, chlorotic male prostitute of civilist kind, who is hanging about the homosexual's steps. The soldier is physically magnetic. He is a logical complement to the average Uranian. He is often attractive by his boyish candour, or what passes for it, by a pleasant manner and companion ability. Even sophistication does not always destroy these traits; the young soldier realizes that to assume them is an alluring part of his evening-profession. Again, he is not a pickpocket or thief, as a rule; he can be brought into the lodging of his hirer without danger of petty losses. The soldier, too, is usually satisfied with a small sum for an hour's surender of himself,—"for any thing you like to do"; while even more decent civilian male-prostitutes are as greedy of money as their female concurrents. The soldier is clean in person, as part of his military education, if not of his instincts. When he is emphatically homosexual himself, then he is almost certain to be free from sexual diseases. Thus the specters of syphilis and its like do not haunt the philostratic patron.
But above all reasons, at least in a large part of Europe, why the Uranian chooses a soldier-prostitute are the facts that the soldier is likely not to be brutal, and not a blackmailer. (See a succeeding chapter.) The soldier has the wholesome fear of military disgrace if he compromises himself. True, he may wish that he could get "something extra", little or much, by threatening his client with scandal; and he does sometimes attempt it. But such a disagreeable surprise is not usual. The soldier knows that he has as much to lose by "a row" as has his patron. So he is discretion itself, as a rule; makes himself useful; is paid his few marks or kronen or lire; and goes his way, with a friendly shake of the hand and his smiling—"Till next time!".
Military Prostitu- tion in Central Europe and Else- where: Its wide Diffusion.
The assertion is often met that military prostitution in Europe, is less in the French and British armies than in any others; and more in the German, Austrian, Hungarian, Russian and Italian services than elsewhere. There seems to be fact in the statement that the French soldier in the ranks is less often a prostitute than is his colleague in other territory. This is part of the racial sentiment against homosexualism in France—of the Gaul in general. Perhaps the same is true of some Scandinavian armies, though prostitute-soldiers are plentifully met in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and so on. The Russian armies are full of prostitution. Any open-eyed visitor to Russian posts soon satisfies himself as to this fact. In Germany everwhere soldier-prostitution is particularly rampant and extended. Here too is the racial instinct. Whole regiments, garrisons, acquire notoriety for it. In some centers, such as Potsdam, the military authorities, after having long winked solemnly at it, have sometimes been unable to ignore its publicity any longer, and have gone so far as to forbid the soldiery certain details of their uniform which have become a sort of smart advertisement that the wearers are to be "had". Any quiet part of a public promenade has its group of young warriors strolling about or sitting in im-modest obscurity, waiting for "business". The shady parks of Potsdam, Dresden, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich, Breslau, Wiesbaden, Karlsruhe, offer this suggestive spectacle nightly.[1]
Copenhagen, Christiania and—especially—Helsingfors, are also notable posts for typical soldier prostitution.
In Austria-Hungary, soldier-harlotry is universal. Such parks as the Stadtpark of Vienna, or the Erzsébet-tér in Budapest, or almost any square or promenade of Linz, Innsbruck, Prag, Debreczin, Temesvár, and so on, are notable markets of an evening for any type of military youth that may be preferred. The Uranian has only to stroll, or to seat himself in a tranquil corner, to have unmistakeable opportunities. Usually the soldier-prostitute detaches himself from any companions; and even if several of the same regiment are en vedette for custom, they carefully leave each other alone. Comparing of notes, if any, will come later—at the beer-hall or the caserne. Sometimes however two soldiers have an understanding; they hunt in couples only, or intermittently, and keep a sort of silent partnership; a practice neither so "safe" nor so agreable for the client. In Vienna, some years ago, there were two young Hungarian troopers of exceptional beauty of physique who, always advertised their attractions in company; walking arm-in-arm about certain haunts, in their smartest uniforms, and often declining absolutely to be bargained-for—separately!
The reader must not suppose that military prostitution is confined to merely the lowest rank of the army. In Germany and in Austria-Hungary a considerable proportion of non-commissioned officers are committed to it, though naturally more cautiously, and at a "professional" tariff perceptibly high, but not always sexually quite logical. In England, France, Spain, Russia, Italy, South-Eastern and Oriental Europe, a good number of impecunious petty officers, and others not such—lieutenants, second-lieutenants, captains—maintain sexual relations with uranian friends of wealth, to add to their pay. The "tariff" is, we will say, from twenty shillings upward, per "rendezvous", or else a special (often largo) subsidy carries them past tailor's-bills, mess-expenses and so on. There is, of course, an element in officer-prostitution due to the officer's real homosexuality. But if he can make money by the secret, he is quite likely to do so. In Vienna, several young officers of elegant appearance, and of distinguished but impoverished stock, have recently become known as "accessible". The "relations" of sundry military-men, removed members of a reigning house, awhile ago were commented satirically. One officer of a great royal Guard carries his cynicism so far that ho systematically haunts baths and public resorts where rich foreign clients are to be met. In Berlin, there is much of the same thing. Under-officers to be "had" abound. To give only one instance, a certain young Bavarian officer in Munich is said to have met paid almost his living expenses and debts, by "cultivation" of homosexual foreigners of wealth. He travelled some months, a few years ago, on this sort of basis with a wealthy Englishman. In another capital lives a certain gallant Hauptmann Z—, whose lavishness, always an object of wonder to his unsuspecting comrades, is explicable by the relation he sustains to Prince X—, a well-known figure in local aristocratic and military life. In Florence, a young officer of distinguished family and looks was long known as an entretenu, and was a topic of frequent gossip, until his suicide a few seasons ago.
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Britishi Military Prostitution.
The hypocrisy, or the ignorance—or the pride—of Englishmen, whichever it may be, frequently asserts if so recondite a topic is touched, that—"British soldiers, thank God, never do that sort of thing! That's a vice they leave to the Continent, sir!" Such an illusion is admirably English. The skeptic has only to walk around London, around any English garrison-center, to stroll about Portsmouth, Aldershot, Southampton, Woolwich, large cities of North-Britain or of Ireland, to find the soldier-prostitute in almost open selfmarketing. Certain private resorts of British homosexuals "deal" in such an element. It holds its ground against the cheap and dangerous civilian-pederasty of England, which is so common. On any evening, the street-corners, or the promenades of the big music-halls and cheap theaters of London and other cities show one the fine flower of the British soldier-prostitute, dressed in his best uniform, clean-shaven, well-groomed and handsome with his Anglo-Saxon pulchritude and vigour—smilingly expectant. He is sure to be approached by some admiring stranger or regular "friend", and asked to take a drink or offered a cigar; and so is brought delicately to a bargain, at a tariff from the modest five shillings to three-and-six, or a sovereign. Sometimes a criminal-trial will point out especially London's soldier-prostitution. Thus in the mysterious "Studio-Murder" affair, in London, a few years ago, the victim, a young homosexual painter named W—, had relations only with young soldier-prostitutes, such as he picked up continually in Hyde Park and at such resorts as the "Alhambra", or on the streets. The most important witness was one such soldier, who was not otherwise connected with the bloody tragedy. His evidence was admirably illustrative of London's homosexual soldiery, and there was a prospect of such unpleasant military scandal if the crime were cleared up that there is little doubt why it was allowed to remain "unexplained", and the soldier-murderer not traced. A further reference to this "Studio Murder" occurs in this book in the chapter on distinctively criminal aspects of homosexuality.
In Canadian garrison-towns there are to be met quite the same aspects of wide-spread, everyday British soldier-prostitution. In the foreign Colonies of Great Britain, not only does the British soldier sell; he becomes a client and buyer of pederastic favours from young natives, as in the Orient.
In the United States, and South America.
In the United States of America where only a relatively small standing-army is part of the military-system, it is an army well-paid, and distributed widely. Its regiments are so dispersed, in fact, that the soldier is hardly an appreciable social element in the largest cities.. Distinctively military prostitution is not discernible as in Europe. The Anglo-Saxon American is certainly highly homosexual, and when he is a soldier he does not lose that quality. But he has no reason to use it in a mercenary manner. He lives well, without being obliged to trade on his person. His home-subsidy is considerable. He is largely stationed where he has a constant sense of practical duty, in his Western posts or other responsabilises. He shows his philarrenism more as a buyer of the foreign-born male prostitute, for his own satisfaction, than offering himself to clients. In the Sandwich Islands, Cuba, Porto Rico, the Philippines and so on, he is not a prostitute of obvious rivalry to the native youth. Not even when he is of Latin or Teutonic or Keltic or what other race, by near blood; as is so much the case in a country not yet racially formed and consolidated. But the philostratic uranian who is near an army-post in the United States often finds an ample curée. For instance, a garrison noted for its homosexual contingent has been that of San Francisco, California, where especially during the time of the sudden Spanish-American War excitement (1898) soldier-prostitution was so active that the "Presidio" quarter was the regular goal of the philostrats of San Francisco. In fact, amiable young soldiers were to be "had" so plentifully that their tariffs fell to nominal prices, and the lodgings of popular amateurs were fairly invaded. This in a country where homosexual intimacies are severely punishable! Conditions more or less similar every now and then obtain in other United States posts, particularly if the soldiers are largely recruits of latin, teutonic or Scandinavian blood.
The Greek army (like that of Finland—an instance of les extrêmes se touchent) has long had the reputation of being one in which soldier-prostitution along with all phases of military similisexualism are excessively diffused. The prevalence of homosexual relationships between Greek officers and the rank-and-file, and the "acessibility" of all troops of the Greek service, from philostratic civilians, have been almost notorious. Recently an unpleasant little international incident occured between Greece and Italy, in consequence of an article exposing homosexuality in the Greek army, written for a Roman journal by Professor Spiro Ladikos, of Rome; which led to a request for his expulsion from Italian territory, on the representations of the Greek Government—which was rather disturbed by the indiscretion of the statements so published.
In the French army, scandals of similisexual kind are far from being unknown, though they are not so often manifested as in the German service. A serious affair of the sort occurred recently (in July, 1908) at Angers, in which eight or ten soldiers were implicated, and a rape on a young comrade was disclosed as an incident.
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Prostitution be- tween Officers and Men.
A significant aspect of military prostitution, perhaps more particularly in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Scandinavia, occurs in the way of every-day homosexual relations between officers and their soldiers in the ranks. This is far from being uncommon. in spite of what would seem to be strong reasons of refinement, personal dignity, prudence, or discipline. Young recruits, as orderlies and otherwise, are discreetly brought, now by money, now by terrorizing, and often enough by tastes, to accepting such sexual relations with either their immediately superiour officers or with remoter ones. Scandals, blackmailing and so on, do not often take shape in consequence, even when there would seem to be so dangerously strong a personal leverage for the soldier to use against his superiours. In fact, a variety of sentiments can restrain him from that line of conduct. Often a passionate affection matures, so that the last thing in a lad's heart would be to betray either his superiour or himself. Young recruits are diplomatically "broken in" to this sort of harness, and often come to accept it as part of their duty. It is sometimes made worth their while. Little saturnalia are held, to which the most discreet are invited; such as those lately sketched in course of the testimony at the Eulenburg Trial. Stettin, Stralsund and some other garrisons have had scandalous explosions of this colouring within the past year; but the majority of regimental amours of so venal and undignified a type do not become known to the uninitiated.
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Prostitution of Certain Classes of Officials in Continental Eu- rope.
An appendage to military prostitution in Continental Europe is the class of more or less ill-paid, minor Government officials, employed in one or another Civil-Service Department. Such young men are in railway, postal, financial, and like routine capacities, particularly in Germany, France, Austria, Spain and Italy. The young man is not salaried enough to live as he wishes. His tasks are monotonous. He cannot gratify his normal sexual desires, for want of money. So he, too, cultivates a clandestine and secondary profession. This class is a combined result of immature years, moral contagion, starvation-wages, and lively racial instinct. It is largely homosexual by really individual taste. Some curious bureaucratic scandals have some times indicated its undercurrents.
The topic of military prostitution will recur in the tenth chapter of this survey, when we shall have under special consideration the most openly criminal aspects of homosexualism—the uranian delinquent as blackmailer, homicide, souteneur and so on, or as the victim of such dangerously degenerate types.
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Prostitution in the Naval Servi- ces: its Relatively Small Proportion as a "Profession" and as Systemat- ized.
The common sailor is not averse to sell his person, to gratify his homosexual taste. He has relatively less opportunity however, unless some long stay in one port occur. But he is not mercenary by instinct or education, in the degree that the soldier is. As a "class", the sailor-prostitute is restricted. In some sea-services he can almost be said not to exist. Still, when on shore, in certain ports especially, he is always "to be had"—Russian, German, English, Italian, Spanish. He has his regular rendezvous in many such localities, where homosexuals, who like the sailor as a "type", can be met: and some procurers "specialize" sailors among their professional étalage. Of course, such tendencies practically are much a matter of a sailor's race.
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Circus-Gymnasts, Riders, Wrestlers and Athletes in General as Ura- nians.
Turning to the varied types of homosexuals not in distinctively military or naval profession, but of superiour bodily virility, let us note that similisexualism is widely manifested in the professionally athletic occupations. It is common to circus-riders, tumblers, acrobats, to men who are devoted to sports and professions of high physical dexterity. The "super-virile" theory may be recognized here, the male so emphatically masculine as to repudiate instinctively the feminine. Among "ring" gymnasts often.exist lasting intimacies of this sort. In athletic circles of all social grades, there is more or less uranianism. The Uranian who is not athletic is almost always attracted to the manly symmetry and masterful strength of the circus-acrobat. Sometimes this in inverted. In the professional pairings of acrobatic associates a vivid psychic interdependence is common. The reader will recall its study in the pair of brothers, united by a passionate affection, in the de Goncourts' "Les Frères Zemganno." A homosexual circus-performer who had also a career of transient literary brilliancy, was the lively Viennese novelist, Emil Mario Vacano. His fictions are now three or four decades old, and the personality of their extraordinary authiour is only a memory to a few admirers; but his sparkling and audacious pages offer some examples of truth stranger than fiction. A clear depiction of homosexual intimacy between two young men, one of them an Eastern acrobat, occurs in a novelette by Vacano, entitled "Humbug". But we need not turn to novels. One of the most distinguished of "strong men" and wonder-athletes of the day, whose physique is famed the world over, is similisexual, almost to complete indifference to women. Another great "physical culturist", as also a renowned professional wrestler and athlete, are uranian in their sexual life. In athletic-clubs, scandals of the homosexual kind are not rare. In London, Paris and Berlin, especially, some such have made social convulsions. In "Turnverein" organizations, for gymnastics and social intercourse, that are so much an institution of German and Austrian town-life, there have been many such episodes.
In the "Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen" for the year 1900, is a reference to the prevalence of homosexual relations between Oriental athletes, ring-performers, and the like; the text being the famous Arabic troupe known as the "Uled Sidi" one; communicated by Herr M. Gudenfeldt. An eminent "bare-back rider," an Englishman by birth, well-known as one of the international artists in the Circus X—, (a man to be esteemed for refinement and serious character) stated to the present writer, some four or five years ago, that in his judgment "one male circus-athlete ring-rider, gymnast, etc., in ten was homosexual"; whether as a complete Uranian or vacillating between uranianism and dionianism. Some highly passional "homosexual affairs" have had, as protagonists, the aristocratic lovers of riders in the ring, or of statuesque trapeze-artists.
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The Uranian in Royal, Aristocrat- ic and Political Life: Various In- stances, Ancient & Modern.
From the camp to the Court is a short step, though a sovereign is not always a leader of battles. Earlier paragraphs of this chapter concern princes not alone theoretically but really Soldier-Uranians; fighters and chieftains, by career and temperament. Turning from such, let us glance at royal, noble, and otherwise eminent personages, (occasionally military withal) for the list of homosexuals in high-life. They are not always aristocratic Uranians to honour the philarrenic intersex and "cause". Often they are princes typically decadent in morals as in intellect; weak, cruel or puppet-like kings; tyrannous or unprincipled statesmen; disgraces to high, or to any other, society. But it is to be said in apology for some such exalted homosexuals that they were men who by birth, by social or political or other responsabilises, stood in false relations to life. We can believe that many such careers would be more edifying reading had such Uranians been born in private station, or could they have turned their backs on courts, cabinets and crowns. The destiny of being " born in the purple" has often warped and ruined character, besides exposing a man to every temptation that lofty station invites.
Rome.
We have spoken of Cæsars who were distinctively soldier-emperors,—ever with sword in hand. Numerous Cæsars not military except by proxy present examples of homosexualism. The reader can refer to the chronicles of Suetonius, Tacitus, Lampridius, Dion Cassius, or to modern studies of the Roman Empire socially, to compare the shades of homosexual instincts and practices of Augustus, Tiberius, Caius ('Caligula'), Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Titus, Hadrian, Heliogabalus, Commodus, and so on. Of Augustus as homosexual in youth and in maturity, we have ample testimony. Hadrian's pederastic loves for the young Antinoüs and others have passed into art forever. It is however to be noted as quite impossible that Tiberius ever was a sexual satyr, a monster of brutal cruelty, as Suetonius and others depict him; the moral and personal character of Tiberius nowadays is justly retrieved. But Nero, Caligula and Heliogabalus are repulsive types. In the amazing story of Nero occurs a minutely clear example of a gifted, intensely receptive but superficial aesthete. We remark a young man unlucky enough to be obliged to reign as an emperor instead of struggling to live as a second-rate actor, or stage-singer. Nero, if divested of his royal atmosphere, if imagined as powerless to command human lives and fortunes, becomes almost wholly an object of pity. He even wins our sympathy. The aesthetic temperament was fundamentally the undoing of Nero, exactly as of thousands of less exalted decadents. A considerable likeness exists between Nero and an impressionable, aesthetic, out-of-place Uranian of modern days—Ludwig II of Bavaria. In each story we see the struggles to be free from political responsibilities that stood in the way of a life of art, of a super-aestheticized existence. Each case points gradually a moral tragedy. Nero became, beyond doubt, the prey of homicidal mania. That same madness is latent in the blood of the erratic Wittelsbachs, just as are their intensely artistic enthusiasms.
England.
William Rufus of England seems homosexual, by natural temperament and habits. The mystery of the death of William, in New Forest, can easily have had some uranistic cause, though historians have ever differed as to whether William may not have been slain by accident. Guillaume de Nangis, Eadmer and other early chroniclers state that the sons of William the Conqueror were "man-loving men"; and the course of life of William II of England was much in consonance with such an idea. In fact, the great Conqueror, William I, was himself not clearly only dionistic. His relations, marital or other, with women had little accord with his natural sexual temperament.
Edward II.
The uranianism of the gentle—but femininely obstinate—Edward II of England was the ruin of his career. Only a homosexual prince would make so much of worthless male favourites. Edward's indiscretion, doggedness and evasiveness on their behalf were so extreme that we do not wonder at the social scandals and bloody political dramas that were part of his reign, ending in his own assassination. The king's idolatry for the handsome Piers Gaveston, on whom he conferred dignities never more unluckily bestowed, has often been told in history and romance; including that striking English drama which German critics still assign to Shakespeare—not to Marlowe. Hardly less vehement and equally homosexual in the relationship was Edward's passion for Hugh Ledespenser, or De Spenser, who became Gaveston's successor sentimentally, after the latter had met his fate. The method in which Edwards murderers performed their horrible regicide, was perhaps chosen not only to avoid immediate suspicion that the King had met a violent death, but as brutally allusive to his passive sexual habits. In "Edward II," Marlowe, has indicated the King's doting passion for his "minion", in several scenes; including one in which the English nobility in their anger and solicitude, with the Duke of Lancaster, the truculent Mortimers and one of the high clergy at their head, compel the sovereign to sign a decree of banishment against Gaveston. In part, it is as follows; couched in Marlowe's extravagantly theatrical diction, which however does not spoil its psychical realism:
King Edw.Meet you for this, proud, overbearing peers?
Ere my sweet Gaveston shall part from me,
This isle shall fleet upon the ocèan,
And wander to the unfrequented Ind.
. . . . . . . I will not yield!
Curse me, depose me, do the worst you can!
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Make several kingdoms of this monarchy,
And share it equally amongst you all,
So I may have some nook or corner left
To frolic with my dearest Gaveston. Archbish.Nothing will alter us, we are resolved. Lancast.Come, come, subscribe! Young Mort.Why should you love him whom the world so hates? King Edw.Because he loves me more than all the world.
All, none but rude and savage-minded men
Would seek the ruin of my Gaveston.
You that be noble-born should pity him. Archbish.Are you content to banish him the realm? King. Edw.I see I must, and therefore am content.
Instead of ink, I’ll write it with my tears.
(He subscribes)
Young Mort.The King is love-sick for bis minion.
King. Edw.Tis done! And now, accursed hand, fall off!
French Sove- reigns.
Several French kings possess historic distinctness as Uränians. Henri III was a Valois homosexual, and a type in general of the unprincipled, vicious, effeminate prince. Three of Henri's so-called "mignons" (a word that turned into the English "minion" now has lost its full offense) were François Maugiron (Duc de Bellegarde); the Duc d'Epernon; and the even more celebrated Quélus. To all of them Henri was attached by passions that bordered on erotic manias; to none so much as to Quélus. The assassination of Quélus brought Henri to a morbid climax of grief, like that of Alexander the Great for Hephaestion. Another royal French homosexual was Louis XIII, a somewhat more tolerable uranian, but not much more so in the weakness, fatuity, faithlessness and selfish egotism that gave full play to the statecraft of Richelieu. The most impassioned uranistic love of Louis XIII was that for Henri d'Effiat, better known as the Marquis de Cinq-Mars. Not only a private and political vengeance made Richelieu inflexible in demanding the death-penalty for this young nobleman, when Cinq-Mars was detected in his famous conspiracy; for the great Minister was resolved to break forever the sentimental influence of Cinq-Mars on Louis. Cinq-Mars seems romantically homosexual also in his relation to his nearest friend, François-Auguste de Thou, the son of the historian. De Thou was a quite different type from Cinq-Mars. Highly intellectual, profoundly moral and religious, the latter trait was emphasized even to pietism in de Thou. But his passion for young Cinq-Mars—considerably his junior—was intense. De Thou not only joined in the ill-starred plot in devotion to d'Effiat, but may be said to have deliberately thrown away his life, rather than survive his friend. Both ascended the scaffold at Lyons.
Another French sovereign, one of wholly different stamp from the two just named, the marvellously politic tyrannical, superstitious, cruel Louis XI, impresses one as an innately uranistic nature; uniting it with a cold-blooded homicidal mania worthy of Caligula. One of Louis's special favourites (see Comines's annals) was Cressol, Governor of Dauphiné (1473). A woman-despiser, turning to sexuality furtively when cynical passion moved him, Louis XI is a dark shape in the gallery of vaguer royal homosexuals.
Philippe d'Orléans, the Regent of France, a prince of fine natural qualities but corrupt to the marrow early in his manhood, casts a particular shadow across the line of kingly homosexuals. His orgies, in the Palais-Royal and elsewhere, have been given sufficiently in detail for many generations of readers of French backstairs scandal. One such "affair" between Philippe and a certain much petted companion, the Abbé de Choisy, is distinguished. The same Abbé de Choisy furnishes possibly the most brilliantly demoralizing, cynical type of an uranian courtier to be met in French print. The caustic private correspondence of the Regent's German mother, Elizabeth-Charlotte, Princess Palatine, by her marriage, Duchess of Orléans (1652-1721), throws fugitive light on aristocratic uranianism in Paris under the Regency—anything but to its respectability. Numerous other records, even more graphic and at first-hand as depictions, are at the service of the curious.
The period of the Regency, as also that of Louis XY, developed aristocratic French uranianism so much that really scandalized remark on it was not over-common. The Bachaumont Memoirs, the secret "Journal" of the Police Inspectors under Sartine, the Cheverney, d'Argenson, Barbier and similar records, offer interesting witness to this. About 1760, for instance, we are told quite casually that the Italian ambassador Erizzo,—"has just given to young Fleury, an actor in the Montensier troupe a cabriolet and horse, so that Fleury can come offener to Paris … The Ambassador keeps Fleury, just as he would a pretty woman … Some days ago, coming from a supper with the Duc d'Aiguillon, the Ambassador went to bed with Fleury; and gave him a ring worth fifty louis d'or and twenty-five louis dor in cash … They say positively that the Ambassador has just settled an income of eight thousand livres on Fleury, over and above thirty louis d'or a month …" Under the Regency and during all of the reign of Louis XV, the garden and arcades of the Palais-Royal were notoriously (and practically without any hindrance) evening by evening, the grand pederastic resort and market for homosexual prostitution in Paris. Very distinguished personages were not above resorting thither. Handsome boys, frequently of tender age, were openly bargained-for, between their parents or other keepers, and Parisian gentleman of wealth and rank: while adult types of the profession, or amateurs, intrigued in unabashed gayety and assurance.
The Duc de Vermandois, is an addition to the list of aristocratic French Uranians. Whether the mysterious Chevalier d'Eon was one or not—at most, in part—Is to be questioned. His memoirs do not determine him nor do the many records from others, as to his being wholly free from uranianism. Of him, more in another chapter, as of some others we have mentioned.
Scandinavia, Russia, etc.
Gustavus III of Sweden, the son of the great Vasa, brilliantly endowed and fascinating, full of soldierly quality, was philarrenic to his heart's core. The assassination of Gustavus at a court-ball, in consequence of the Ankerström Conspiracy referred itself to an under-welter of homosexual circumstances and relations, known to Ankerström, to Axel Fersen, to Ribbing and to others of the King's favorites.
Several royal Muscovite homosexuals have reigned. One was Paul I. The other was no less than Peter the Great. Peter is a further instance of dionism and uranianism, blended in one individual. Vehemently erotic as a young man, he was given to homosexual intimacies while a frequenter of women. The dualism 'of taste did not disappear as Peter grew older. In view of his relations with both sexes, and of his wonderful energy of character, there appears much of the Oriental in Peter's complex, ungovernably animal tendencies. A special uranian favorite of Peter was the celebrated parvenu Mentschnikoff. The notorious uranianism of Alexander I of Russia, has already been mentioned. But Alexander was not the last of Russian princes to be known as an Uranian. Two conspicuous scions in our own day have been actors in "affairs" that excited brisk comments in other cities than St. Petersburg.
England's James Stuart.
We turn again to the history of English sovereigns. James I, an eccentric mixture of the kingly and unkingly—of the well-balanced and the "just not mad"—was, first and last, a consistent Uranian. His court became aware of it, even to its use by state-intriguers. James never could resist a handsome young man. Once in love with him, James was almost incredibly indifferent to moral un-worth behind mere beauty of body, exactly as dionistic princes have been mischievously bewitched by mistresses. The histories of James's chief favourites are good illustrations of the dangers of becoming a royal pet. Unluckily, James was incompetent to protect the young objects of his passion from the consequences of their elevation to his favour, or from the results of their own follies and crimes. His liking, too, was a shifting equation. Not simply a pederast, that quality distinguished fractionally James's sentimental intimacies with beautiful youths. Good-looking lads were deliberately put in the way of the royal Uranian to make use of his passion, either for themselves or others. James was always eager to teach an ephebus Greek or Latin—and Greek and Latin morals. Two or three of these favourites played pernicious roles, even to disturbing the English throne. Prominent was Robert Carr, a mere groom of the stables, but of unusual beauty, brought into the eye of the king by what was not just an accident—a fall during a pageant. Of young Carr James became dotingly fond. The boy was so swiftly the recipient of estates, titles, privileges and so on, especially as Earl of Somerset, that scandal and hatred could not well have failed soon to attach to him. Carr was a thorough-going young reprobate, devoid of heart or conscience, boasting of his sovereign's very weakness him; and in time instigated the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Carr was essentially a dionian; his relations to James were of the most mercenary sort au fond. With some difficulty, he was saved from the death that he deserved. But the rest of his life passed in obscurity and want; for James had turned to a new favourite, George Villiers, a remarkably handsome young student at Cambridge. Villiers ultimately was made Duke of Buckingham; the famous "Steenie", for his royal lover. The reader need not be reminded that Buckingham was however à man of other and better traits than the fair-faced predecessor, Carr. In Buckingham's hands rested, now and then, much of the statesmanship of two successive reigns; and his murder in 1628 was rather more than a merely sentimental incident. It was à-propos of this favourite of James I that the royal Uranian himself one day declared—"I am neither a god nor an angel—and I confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than any one else. Christ had his John, and I have my George!"
In the reign of Charles I, occurred the famous divorce case of Lord Audley on similisexual grounds of explicit detail, a celebrated scandal of its epoch.
The English Commonwealth Epoch.
The English Commonwealth by its iron-bound, Hebraic, code of social and political life, made a profession of turning England into a second Canaan, with a Pentateuchal conscience as to thought and word and deed. Did it banish homosexualism? Could such a super-abomination of fleshly sins, according to Christian ideas, find any nourishment, while Cromwell was at the head of the nation?—with every parson and hedge-preacher, Leviticus in hand, a censor and a judge over his neighbour? We may be certain that not a thousand Cromwells, not the most sharp-seeing religious tyranny of even Protestant sort, could root it out; any more than could the confessionals of the Roman Church or the harshness of civil laws. Natural instinctive in Anglo-Saxons, it would defy the cant of pietism, the rule of Moses and the Prophets. One brilliant leader of the Cavalier party, Montrose, is said to have been dionian-uranian. We may observe here, by the by, that in the Scotch temperament, as in the Irish, there is a vivid, racial element of homosexualism.
The English Rest- oration,Georgian etc., Periods.
With the Restoration period came quite another aspect of English social ethics. That most scandalously immoral, that most crudely licentious of royal courts, which centered on Charles II and his crew of familiars, male and female, was by no means wholly heterosexual, in spite of its putting a premium on feminine harlotry. Homosexual intimacies, often of repulsively gross sort, were a social jest. The curious can study this state of affairs in the secret diarists, the prurient back-stairs chroniclers of the time; can trace it also in the grosser satirical poets and dramatists of the date. Pepys has hints of it, though Pepys is chiefly preoccupied with heterosexual gossip as to the frail ladies of Whitehall. There is a curious pathos in one of Pepys serious anecdotes, vaguely uranian of motif—the foolish quarrel between "Sir H. Bellasis" and his best friend, "Tom Porter," in 1667, which led to their fatal duel; of which affair all London talked with wonder and pity.
In the reign of Queen Anne and of the first Georgian sovereigns there were enough suggestions of homosexual intimacies between personages in high society and politics to receive cutting allusions of poets and other satirical writers. Lampoons and squibs of such kind flew about the clubs and coffee-houses. Pope has biting references to such Court-favourites as Lord Hervey—"Sporus, that mere white curd of asses'-milk".
In the Guelphic blood have been remarkable, from time to time, traces of reaction from a notorious heterosexualism to a notorious homosexuality. The Hanoverian dynasty has shown it. George III, when a young man, was charged by common report with sexual intimacy with his personal and political favourite, Lord Bute. The caricaturists of the time are prodigal of allusions to this accusation. Bute, when prime-minister, was the subject of countless pasquinades not omitting it. It is to this sort of gossip that Byron refers in his poem "The Vision of Judgement" when he declares that the annals of George III show—"How to a minion first he gave the helm". George the Fourth seems to have been consistently heterosexual. But his brother, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, who in his younger days had the family-beauty, early was marked out in English society for uranian amours; and eventually had to appear in a court of justice because of the murder of his valet Sellis—an affair about which floated a thick cloud of homosexualism. Between the Duke and certain members of his household there had been criminal intimacies. The trial mentioned was the sensation of the hour. Sellis was supposed to have had a connection with the Duke, and to have been supplanted by another servant, Neale. According to another theory, Sellis (who was found dead in his room, with his throat cut, in circumstances that precluded ideas of suicide) was murdered by the Duke, because Sellis had threatened the latter with exposure of his intimacy with Neale. The Duke got out of the affair with great difficulty. He became presently King of Hanover, and was the center of a German court plentiful in homosexual interests. Within the present generation of English royalty,
another princely personage (since deceased) was supposed to be among an aristocratic clique implicated in a famous London homosexual esclandre. It is, in fact, believed that this affair was hushed up "so expeditiously, because it came so near to the throne; certain other high-born participants gaining time to "leave their country for their country's good".
The wide prevalence of Uranian relationships in British "high society" to-day is too well-attested, too familiar the world around by more or less noted scandals and malodourous legal processes, to require extensive reference here. Several phases of it must be cited in other sections of this study, in appropriate connections. Mayfair's sensational divorce-proceedings have added evidence to the aggregate. Of the similisexual tastes of Englishmen of "our finest social circles" at home, a tacit evidence is their persistent residence abroad in countries where they can feel safer from suspicion and from blackmailing scandals. One eminent personage in British political life, who once reached the highest honours in a career that has appeared to be taken up or thrown by with curious capriciousness or hesitancy, is a constant absentee in his beautiful home in Southern Europe, whence only gentle rumours of his racial homosexuality reach his birth-land.
Various Historic Uranians.
In fact, every period of social history has an interminable catalogue of homosexuals of quality. We have already encountered them in course of observations in preceding chapters, when speaking of classic Greece and Rome. They multiply as we review the Middle-Ages, the Renaissance courts, castles, palaces and camps. It is an aristocracy of all ages of life. Gallant young Conradin of Hohenstaufen and his beloved and not less gallant cousin, Frederick of Baden, those two brave boys only in their teens, united (1268) in perhaps the most pathetic tragedy of political murder in history; Prince Eugene of Savoy; the famous Ban of Kroatia, Joseph Jellachich (1801-1859); Count Wenzel-Anton von Kaunitz (1711-1794), the colossally active, efficient, cultured chief-minister under Maria-Theresia; Prince Heinrich of Prussia, (1726-1802) the brother of Frederick the Great,—as superiour a general, as accomplished a man of letters and arts as was the great Frederick himself; Baron von Pollnitz; the philanthropic Count von Zinzendorf; Cambacérès, patriot and statesman, Count Khevenhüller, the Austrian soldier and statesman under the Maria-Theresian regime, and the victor over Turkey, Russia, France and Germany; the terrible Robespierre, whose homosexual relations with young Duplay, during his most sanguinary Revolutionary days seem to indicate his temperament as one of maniacal bloodlust and erotism.[2] Prince Kolowrat-Liebkinsky (1778-1861), distinguished as minister of Austrian affairs, as patriotic Bohemian, and as a true Maecenas in the development of Viennese art and letters—all these men, so diverse in types have shown more or less unequivocally their intersexual impulses. The royal portrait-gallery (which will be considered more in detail presently) also offers the eccentric Prince Adolph-Friedrich of Mecklenberg (1766-1794) among curiously femininized uranians; Leopold-August, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, (1772-1822: see later); and King Frederick-Charles of Württembtirg, who was noted for his homosexual relationships, little concealed. One of his favourites, von Dillenburg, had been a groom, Dillen; who rose to the nobility by his complaisances. The same royal Court, at Stuttgart, in the earlier eighties of the last century, was the scene, of a complicated political and homosexual drama, reminding one of the dilemmas of King Edward II of England; in the ascendency, notoriously homosexual, gained over King Charles by two American favourites, neither of them much passed his teens, both of humble origins. They fairly exploited the enamoured king—for their common benefit—instead of being rivals (a truly Yankee stroke of cynical practicality) until they were expelled the city, by a ministerial coalition against them; ending thus the famous "Jackson-Woodcock Affair" of 1884. One of the most esteemed and admired of the Austrian arch-dukes of the present line, whose striking soldierly personality is seen towering above most other conspicuous assistants at high and fashionable functions; his relative, of the older arch-ducal circle; also a young scion of the same great gens, the hero of a serious homosexual.scandal in London,, at the time of the last Coronation, to which he had been sent among other representatives of the Imperial Court; Prince A— of A—, recently divorced under circumstances of homosexuality; an enormous list of teutonic homosexuals of blue-blood—all could lengthen the procession. The painstaking and never too-rash Wissenschaftlich-Humanitäre Komitee, in Berlin, has lately put in its table of statistical estimates, an average of five per cent of the German aristocracy as being homosexuals; two persons in each forty. The army-percentage must also be considered. (See other chapters.)
Particularizing Germany, the newest "Berlin Scandals" as they have been called (for which there is room for only a few lines in this book) are showing how German homosexualism wears the broad-striped toga; approaches the throne now as ever; is perhaps even more contemporaneously born in the purple than might prudently be admitted. The "Harden Cases," and their immediate successors, which have not spared even an Imperial Chancellor ( though in his instance there was no obvious personal foundation for the suggestion—repudiated as a libel) have been of indirect as well as direct bearings. There can be little doubt that the Schulenburg, Moltke, Eulenburg, Hohenau and Lynar cases, as others, have been got out of nervous public attention as quickly as possible, to avoid compromising hundreds of aristocratic similisexuals in Germanic territory. The notorious scandals before Berlin aristocracy, in 1903 known as the "Affair of the Lakes", in which a clique of young scions and old ones, mostly rich and titled residents along the beautiful shores of the Müggelsee, were in the habit of quitting their villas at night, and sailing around the lake, naked but not at all ashamed, their boats wreathed in garlands, lighted with torches and lanterns—amid orgies of the sort described by Tacitus, more or less imitated—were distinguished for nobly-born participators. The need of interrupting these proceedings without making too great an aristocratic scandal gave the Berlin courts much trouble. Matters were compromised after the most unavoidable arrests, and by fines and hints to self-exile.
Separator
The Italian Re- naissance.
The social and political history of the Italian Renaissance is incidentally a history of uranianism in high-life, so diffused that the emotion was a concurrent of patrician æstheticism, in all major centers of Italy's awakened culture. Such families as the Baglioni, the Medici, the Borgia, the Sforza, the Visconti, offer numerous contrasted examples. Savonarola's sermons in Florence vehemently dealt with such instincts. Its aristocratic tolerance was considered, by the Italian Church particularly, as the principal cause of scourges of the epoch—the plague, famines, invasions of the Turkish hosts, earthquakes and inundations. The jurist Carpzovius, as late as 1645, advocated the burning alive of all homosexuals, for the reason last mentioned! That homosexuality should flourish in the Renaissance in Italy, was natural, as a part of the return to Greek cults of the Beautiful. But it did not decline as that sentiment calmed: and it has not done so in Italy to-day, nor will it do so, especially in Central and South-Italy. The Italian is perennially heterosexual and homosexual, in a degree sometimes puzzling. He has by race-inheritance an intense sexual feeling for male beauty, along with his sensuous-sexual appreciation of feminine charms. In Italian high life, especially where not strongly parisianized, the Italian aristocrat as uranian or dionian never is rare.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
One of the most melancholy and picturresque figures in recent royal homosexualism was King Ludwig II of Bavaria. King Ludwig is another example of the gifted Uranian inextricably "out of place', by being born to a throne. He was a true Wittelsbach in his vividly intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities; with the concurrent Wittelsbach taint of madness in his blood. Aversion to Ludwig II as a careless ruler, as a vast spendthrift, through show-castles and Wagnerism, of his country's revenues, as imitator of Louis XIV of France in banality, not dignity, becomes less as we sift the story of his life. From his betrothal with the Princess Sophie of Bavaria Ludwig broke away, only because he could not enter into marriage-relations with any woman. He could love only the male; and he loved many. The list of his favourites is long; men distinguished for not only their personal attractiveness, but for high mental or artistic individualities, whether writers, actors, composers, singers,—artists in every branch of aesthetics; His protègés in the military-calling, the youths in humblest life—it is a. remarkable catalogue. A literature exists on this topic, enlarged since the end of the King's career in the Lake of Starnberg. Whether that fate was accident, suicide or murder is not yet quite clear. The tone of some of King Ludwig's letters to Wagner is nothing if not uranistic, as in this example: "My innermost Beloved! I have just heard that you are once more entirely recovered. Oh, with what an outburst of joy did I greet this news! How I burn with longing for those tranquil, sacred, hours, which shall vouchsafe to me once more the long-missed sight of the being dearest to me of all on earth! To death itself—your true Ludwig". The present King of Bavaria (Otto) never has been more than a nominal ruler, because of his insanity, and is slowly closing his life in complete seclusion as a patient; but Otto, when entirely sane was also homosexual, and he has shown this sort of erotism since his madness deepened.
'There is no need in lengthening this list. Obviously into the demesne of contemporary aristocratic life there is both delicacy and difficulty in entering too frankly. In the next chapter, we shall see how incessantly is homosexual the man professionally of literary and aesthetic callings. He is often aristocratic of position; is often also of finer fibre than many kings and princes.
Differences in Sex- ual Choice: the "Phylosyrphetic" Uranian of High Class.
À-propos of the universality of philarrenic nature, we may observe in aristocratie Uranians two distinct expressions of personal tastes marked out as to homosexual connections. There is the sort of Uranian, himself a gentleman, who is attracted only to individuals of his own grade; desiring intercourse sexually only with a man of refinement of physique and of superior psychic individuality. The other class, however aristocratic, seeks always lower social types for partners; demands coarser physiques and uneducated and unrefined natures; this choice along with particular aversion to sexual intercourse with equals or superiors. Such aristocratic similisexuals may be called "philosyrphetics," or lovers of "the man of the mob," the voyou from the slum; and the preference often turns out a dangerous one—as we shall see later. But it is an idiom quite as marked as sexual dislike of women. We find the prince who would rather be embraced by a dragoon, the peer who prefers a butcher or a blacksmith, the cultivated leader of a social circle to whom only a common waiter, or a rough mechanic, appeal sexually. In such "philosyrphetic" Uranians—extremely numerous—just as among heterosexuals, we have a psychic problem illustrating the fact that like seeks unlike, and that sexual love is often an unity out of dissimilarity. But constant sexual association with lower intellectual or social homosexuals impairs the manly idealism, coarsens the nature, and destroys the original refinement of its victim. In homosexual love, as in heterosexual love and friendship, the man easily becomes what his company is; especially under circumstances so potent on the psychic essence.
The Royal Uran- iad.
A distinction is not always easily made between the sort of woman in high and responsible station—a queen, warrior or political leader—who is notably masculine in her intellect, her tastes, her habits, and with little or no amorous bias through her career; and the really similisexual woman the Uraniad. Types of female sovereigns showing, minds and dispositions male rather than female, are presented familiarly to us in Elizabeth of England, in Catherine de' Medici, in Christina of Sweden, and so on. But many are indistinctly uraniad, if at all so. Elizabeth of England was certainly a normal woman in the unchaste private life of a nominally "Virgin Queen"—about whom there mdst be talked "no scandal". Catherine of Russia is said to have become uraniadistic as she grew old. In the royal house of Wittelsbach there has been a strain of female contra-sexualism, along with the excessive heterosexuality and uranianism of the males. Three princesses, two of them becoming sovereigns, are recent illustrations; in each case with tragic circumstances in their histories and one of them ended recently in an abominable assassination that shocked the civilized world.
The Soldier-Ura- niad.
Many presumptive examples of the intersexual female, the virile uraniad, occur with the veritable woman-at-arms; queen or peasant. In her mannish temperament are to be added the unfeminine traits of physical and moral courage, and her masculine muscularity. The woman-warrior has been a picturesque interloper in camp and battlefield, ever since wars were waged. The old legends of the Amazon race and of the Centaurs are deviations from realities, the woman who much preferred to wield a spear rather than bear a child, and the man who so dominated his horse that he seemed a part of it.
Classic types of amazonians are plentiful. Among early ones we have the Biblical Deborah, seeress, judge and captain over Israel—all at once. We have Bonduca, Boadicea, Tomyris, Zenobia, Jeanne Dare, Margaret of England, the terrible women-warriors of the houses of Flanders and Penthièvre—every school-girl knows thorn. The pages of mythology and romance furnish a long array of soldierly ideals; Semiramis, Penthesilea, Thalestris, Camilla, Bradamante, Brindomart, Hippolyta, the screaming Valkyrs the resplendently divine Minerva—that noblest conception of female divinity ever evolved by human imagination in any religion—and the mystic, cruel Bellona. Diana is un-feminine. Even Venus enters the battlefield, in Homer and Vergil. Apart from myths, the military spirit seems almost supreme in such uraniad types as Samura, the heroine of the defence of Ancona, the American Moll Pitcher, the valiant Anna Liihring, of Bremen; or the Hungarian heroines of Erlau's siege, who fought like the strongest and bravest of men. In many savage tribes to day women are as expert fighters as the men. But despite outward virility in such types, we cannot classify them as true Uraniads: for their amorous instincts are either too unclear, or else are more or less conclusively heterosexual. We say—"But yet a woman.
Sudden political upheavals create the soldiering amazonian. Sometimes she is fiercer and more sanguinary than most men. In the French Revolution period, the Vendée campaigns elicited squads of women, fighting in the ranks. Remarkable examples of feminine soldiering enter into the savage Chouan chronicles; But we may note that the French Revolution, though in the Vendée productive of notable heroines of camp and battle, does not afford us so many examples of women-soldiers, who were drawn to combat- by patriotism and natural firmness of nature, as it does instances of women who were détraquées; unheroic in their blood-thirstiness and in sheer passion for excitement; lower-class amazons particularly. One realizes such a strain of sanguinary unfeminity in Latins, at a Spanish bull-fight or a French guillotining. Such were the terrible tricoteuses at the guillotine, in 1792-93-94.
The sporadic courage of a-woman-duellist, with rapier, broadsword and pistol, is essentially of the military kind. The French Communal struggles in 1870-71, developed many amazingly courageous women-soldiers, who defended barricades and fought like tigresses. But such amazons were of doubtful moral courage; often killing and burning for the mere frantic nervous pleasure of such a debauch of blood. Many of these unsexed women were similisexual—sapphistic prostitutes, or similar, in instincts and habits. On the other hand, many were entirely normal sexually.
In fact, the woman-soldier whose type and history night be taken as presupposing her being an Uraniad, but whose similisexualism should not be affirmed without conclusive knowledge, is of constant recurrence. Captain Rosa Castellanos, a heroine of the recent Spanish-American War in Cuba, was a conspicuous example of the woman-warrior. One of the recently-deceased pensionnaires of the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, Madame D—, had fought with great distinction in the Napoleonic campaigns, had received formal right to wear male clothing (of course including her uniform) and died at a great age, in the national institution named. Very recently came to newspaper notice quite as striking a military woman. One of the magistrates presiding in the chief criminal court of Toulon summoned as witness in a robbery-affair Madame I—, mentioned as a widow, employed at La Verriere. The justice was rather surprised when a gentleman presented "himself," correctly attired as such, in frock-coat and overcoat, and so on. But Madame I—, for she it was, explained that during thirty-seven years she had worn only male clothing, by special permission from the French Government, because of her notable service in the Franco-Prussian War, in which she had taken part with honour and danger, as a spy and in the ranks. Madame I— gave no other than a masculine impression of herself; she smoked and drank moderately. She declared her age as about sixty-four. She had been a witness in the trial of Marshal Bazaine.
The annals of all military nations are full of examples of women-soldiers. They have marched in the ranks with common soldiery, they have commanded with skill as officers; this, in a great proportion of instances, without detection of sex, till wounded or dead on the field or in the hospital. They have defended trench and bastion against the Ottoman in Hungary, the Spaniards in Holland, the Moor in Spain, the invader in Italy, and to a particular extent have served Poland. The hundred wars of Germany and Austria have found women fighting shoulder to shoulder by their brothers, with pike or musket, serving the cannon instead of rooking children to sleep or sweeping kitchens. The latest frontier-fighting in Albanian, Macedonian and Turkish localities has striking examples of female soldiering, several officers being women,
A Fighting Ura- niad: Catalina de Erauso.
The career of Catalina de Erauso, a noted Spanish soldier-uraniad, is a story of curious interest in Spanish warfare in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Catalina de Erauso, called the "Monja Alferez"—"The Fighting Nun"—was born in San-Sebastian in 1585. There appears to be nothing in her origin or earliest life to influence toward her becoming the man-woman that she grew up to be. In her childhood she was committed to a relative, the abbess of a convent, for her bringing-up; and till she was about fifteen Catalina wore a nun's habit. She was expected to adopt a religious vocation, the last one that circumstances suggest as natural to her. Catalina was an unruly little novice; slapped and fought with the sisters; and finally decided to escape the convent for a purely secular life, and to be incidentally as wholly masculine as possible. She hid in a wood several days, having a page's dress at hand. When she emerged from this forest-intermezzo, Catalina de Erauso had disappeared; she was the page "Francisco Loyola". She was daring enough to go at once toward San-Sebastian, and to take a place as servant in the family of a citizen of distinction. Unrecognized as to indentity or sex, Catalina remained in this post, till one day her father came to make a visit to her master, with the particular object of talking over the long-discussed disappearance of his daughter. She was not recognized when she met her parent in the hallway. But no sooner was he closeted with his host, than Catalina though it prudent to disappear from the house and San-Sebastian; first taking a handsome sum of money (not hers) as provision for the way. She became a cabin-boy on a large gallion, owned by an uncle, Captain Estevan Eguino, who had scarcely ever seen her, and so did not recognize her as a relative or a girl. He became extremely fond of Catalina—or "Francisco"—and made her his personal servant. Catalina remained with him as such, till she grew tired of him. Therewith she decamped without warning; again with a considerable forced-loan, from her affectionate kinsman and master. She took ship for South-America and arrived in Panama, The rest of her life was mostly to be passed in the Western World. By this time Catalina was a fine, manly personage indeed, in every external. She was servant, house-porter and other things, for different masters. She was much liked, though continually fighting with fellow-employés. She was the object of several love-affairs, and of marriage-proposals which she declined. She continued to conceal her sex. After a while she went to Lima. In the city of Concepcion, Catalina had a brother, engaged as a secretary to the Governor. Here begins a queerly romantic part of Catalina's career. The brother did not know her. Apparently homosexual, he quite speedily fell in love with the good-looking "boy"—whom he met at some entertainment. He.made the "boy" his companion. Catalina, undoubtedly was physically feminosexual to some extent, more or lest abnormal enough to deceive women as to her masculinity of body, but one doubts that she was able to "explain herself", to her brother as being fully male. A war with one of the native tribes broke out, and Catalina enlisted. She fought with distinction, and captured a lost standard. She was made an ensign. Her brother was in the army with her, and their intimacy was still close; but he did not yet know of their kinship. For five years, Catalina remained in active service as an ensign. In every way she demeaned herself, in camp and mess, as a man of bold spirit. She was a fine swordswoman. After taking part in several duels, she fought one of peculiar savagery, with "seconds" on both sides taking their share. It, occurred in total darkness. She left her enemy dead. When her brother came to help her to recover from her wounds, she disclosed her secret; and that she was his sister, Catalina de Erauso. Such a success in male travesty surpasses many improbabilities of the stage. After this duel and consequent disclosure, Catalina—deserted. She went to Tucuman, in the Argentine territory. She suffered much hardship, and yet managed to keep well, and was attractive enough for the daughter of a wealthy native land-owner to fall in love with her. But, unfortunately, just then a high ecclesiastic in the country to which she had fled chose Catalina as a model husband for his niece. Catalina was not willing to be married, though certainly she could have played the husband well, and had duped many female friends before this date. There must have been something incorrigibly opposed to "settling down" in her temperament. So, on this occasion, Catalina affianced herself to both young ladies; received rich presents; and then as the weddings drew near, she—fled. This episode ended in the first confession of Catalina that she was a woman; except the admission made to her brother. In course of further adventures, of a new term of military-service, and associations with robbers and rascals of all grades (twice she was sentenced to death, once being reprieved when at the very gallows) she was involved in a fierce night-quarrel in a gaming-house in Guamanga. She was demanded by the police, but fought the officers like a tigress. The Bishop of the place protected her, and when in his care, a fugitive from justice, she confessed her story to him. He was thrown into such consternation and admiration as few ecclesiastics experience. He begged Catalina to resume her womanly station in life. She consented, and entered a cloister. Her kind adviser dying while she was in this humour, she passed to. another convent, in Lima. After two years of this retirement, she decided to return to Spain. During the voyage, she wrote her autobiography. There is no reason to suppose its details much exaggerated; many of even the most extraordinary facts have been verified. In Spain, she became a sort of wonder. Her story was noised abroad all Europe. Still, she does not seem to have been as notorious a visitor as she expected to find herself. She went to Rome, and was received by the Pope. She entertained him with her autobiography, was forgiven her sins, and received papal license to wear male attire, a permission that she had not much troubled herself about, till then. After Rome, she went to Naples. She managed to get into a scandalous street-fight, with ready blade, as usual. From that time, her history is wholly unknown. It is not clear whether she returned to South America, nor where so restless a mortal died. Her appearance during her Roman visit was described in a letter from the noted Italian traveller, Pietro Delle Valle. He speaks of her as a tall, strong, dark, and "eunuch-like" person of some thirty-five or forty years, "in no wise suggesting a woman."
An Heroic Sold- ieress: Franziska Skanagatta.
A masculine soul in feminine physique is found in the famous Franziska Skanagatta, one of the heroines of modern Austrian history She was educated in the Military Academy at Wiener-Neustadt, in Austria, without being detected as a girl; as she managed to be enrolled in the name of a brother who was dead. Maturing into a fine, athletic young soldier, Franziska was made an officer. She entered then upon a completely military career. She was a superb horsewoman, swordswoman, shot, and all else, and had a commanding presence. She went into regular and hard service, and took part in the Austrian portion of the anti-Napoleonic struggle—with high honour. Her most intimate friend was a young officer, passionately attached to her, but unaware of her sex. The officer was mystified as to his profound feeling for Franziska, and she felt a deep reluctance to expose the fact which would have relieved him. At length, after being severely wounded she told the secret to him. She therewith left the army, allowing her sex to be known generally. With ovations to her courage and career, she went to Vienna, where the Emperor decorated her, and confirmed her military honours. She married her friend of the camp, in what proved to be happy wedlock. She was married in full uniform, but after the ceremony she never, resumed male attire. She became gradually feminized, had several children, and her family is represented to-day in Austria. A portrait and memorial to Franziska Skanagatta are always shown to visitors to the great Wiener-Neustadt Military Academy.
Angela Postovoi- tow, the Heroine of Poland.
No nobler type of the woman-soldier occurs than the famous Angela Postovoitow, a participant in the latest of the Polish insurrections. Of excellent family, patriotic and strong-natured, of deep religious feeling, she took part in field, in council and in camp, as soldier and officer in the uprising—with splendid enthusiasm—a sort of contemporary Jeanne Dare. Of great personal beauty, in her uniform she was one of the handsomest and most romantic figures in the Polish army. If she was feminosexual in her nature is not clear. She appears indeed rather as a sexless creature, rapt in work for her unfortunate country, when sons failed in Poland and daughters took their places. She was adored by her companion-in-arms, General Langiewicz, but "could not give him more than warm and uninterrupted friendship." In the battles of Chrobrze and of Busk, in which Angela was one of the glories of those days, she was severely wounded, leading her troop of young Polish patriots. Very presently she was forced to fly, with so many other refugees. She died some years later, an exile in Switzerland, in the arms of General Langiewicz. A virgin-warrior, indeed, her memory is imperishable in Poland. There were several female-officers of equal virility and heroism, in the same melancholy campaign.
A Female Cavalry- Colonel.
In the Russian Departement of Wiatka, at the town of Jelabuga, recently was unveiled a memorial erected to the honour of the heroic soldier-maiden Nadeschda Andreievna Durowa, She died in 1866, at an advanced age. She served with great distinction in the anti-Napoleonic campaigns, especially in 1812, under the name of "Alexandroff." She was advanced to the colonelcy of a Lithuanian regiment, won numerous attentions from her superiors on account of her brave and skilful leadership, and was decorated with many orders. She did not withdraw from her profession till her services were not needed. She then betook herself to active literary work. Her sketches, historical studies and personal reminiscences of periods of her service and other observations were widely popular. She lived to be eightythree years of age, and died with general respect. The unveiling of the monument to "Colonel Durowa" was accompanied by a full military-mass, and the Russian army was represented by special delegates.
These warrior-uraniads remind us, verily, of Schiller's lines, in his "Jungfrau von Orleans" where the heroic Maid exclaims:
"Nicht mein Geschlecht beschwöre! Nenne mich nicht Weib!
Gleich wie die Körperlosen Geister, die nicht freien,
Auf irdische Weise, schliess ich mich an kein
Geschlecht der Menschen an!" …
The Uraniad as A Sailor.
An English classic poet has written an amusing bit of verse on "The Lady at Sea." Experiences of marine travel discourage first ideas that feminine sailorship could ever be of much practical use. As a matter of fact, a considerable proportion of sailors have been curiously like Uraniads, in merchant-marines, and even war-service. In some countries industrious in coast-fisheries, women take a liberal share of the regular work of navigating craft; often on voyages of duration and hard weather. In Brittany, Normandy, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, in Finland and along the North Sea, and in several Eastern ports, the ships are womened, as well as manned. About forty certificates now are held by Frenchwomen, as being "able seamen", folly experienced in their calling. On the Brittany coast nearly three-thousand women are officially certified as competent seamen, with no concealment of their sex, but under the restriction from the French government, against promotion to any command. One steamer in the Turkish coast-service, is wholly "manned" by women-sailors, though not entirely so officered. In Denmark, the occupation of a pilot is followed by numerous women, under due legal certificates. On the Greek island of Himla, near Rhodes, the majority of the women are sailors for a livelihood, pari passu with the men of the place; and rival the latter as divers. In this Greek island prevails too the curious custom that a girl is not quite marriagable till she has made three voyages, and has attested her skill in sponge-fishery. In Santa-Barbara, another community abundant in female sailors, an appropriate fact has been the care of the lighthouse by the old mother of a family of thirteen women, each one a sailor! In Japan and China, many women are well-trained professional hands on the native coast-ships. Some Chinese ports have a large fleet of women-manned boats. Lately in Bristol an excellent seaman disclosed her sex as feminine to a hospital-doctor, as a secret for many years undetected. The second officer of an American ship, personally known to a friend of the writer of this study, is a woman; which fact seems not even suspected by her ship-mates, after years of service.
Many of these examples are undoubtedly not so much those of the Uraniad completely, amatively such, as either of "asexuals"; or of women more or less masculinized in body, temperament, nerves and intellects. But they illustrate departurer from the feminine toward an Intersex. of manifest individuality, and of characteristically similisexual impulses in love-desire.
Women-Acro- bats.
Female acrobats, women-riders in circuses and so on, are femino-sexual in a considerable proportion. Communications that the writer has received from a physician with a considerable clientage of acrobatic women, indicate several who prefer peculiarly feminine women as object of sexual intercourse. The most intimate friend of a female royal personage of great beauty, much spoken of as feminosexual, was a "star" of the Continental ring; a magnificent equestrienne, she was said to-be also of abnormal physical development. The intimacy was close enough to add to the gossip about one of the most gifted and unhappy of sovereigns who ever mounted, not horses, which she loved, but a throne that she hated. The severer athletic and acrobatic professions are however emphatically those in which sexual impulses of any sort must be most carefully controlled; eveu to severe repression of their physical gratifications.
Separator
↑The testimony elicited during the very recent homosexual scandals known as the Harden, Schulenburg, Eulenburg, Lynar, and concurrent processes in 1907-8, have thrown some interesting side-lights on German military, prostitution, as on German homosexualism in general, especially in high life: though such data are in no way novel, and although every method possible to suppress such matter from publicity was used by the legal and military courts concerned. The press-work of this book being fcfar advanced at the time of these remarkable processes—some of them being not yet ended as the writer makes this hasty reference to them—it is unfortunately not possible to cite them at any length in course of this study.
↑During Robespierre's long sojourn in the Duplay family, his intimacy with the handsome young son—eighteen years old—was increasingly a topic of scandal and satire behind the back of the dreaded Incorruptible. For the persistent legend of any romantic tie with Eléonore Duplay, one of the daughters of the family, a girl who seems to have cultivated a sentiment for Robespierre, there is no foundation of fact—Robespierre maintaining a fraternal and rather bored attitude toward her. Of Robespierre's taking sexual interest in any woman no evidence sustains sifting. As to the lad Jacques-Michel Duplay, an indication of the scandal occurs in the fact that when the boy was hustled into the Prison of Sainte-Pélagie, on the 9-10-th Thermidor, somewhat after Robespierre had been brought thither, one of the prison-crowd called out—"Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to annonnce to you the arrival of Robespierre's ganymède—along with his Prime-Minister!" (The latter reference was to young Duplay's father).
