[84] See account of Udall in the National Dictionary of Biography.
[85] Complete Poems of Richard Barnfield, edited with an introduction by A. B. Grosart, 1876. The poems of Barnfield were also edited by Arber, in the English Scholar's Library, 1883. Arber, who always felt much horror for the abnormal, argues that Barnfield's occupation with homosexual topics was merely due to a search for novelty, that it was "for the most part but an amusement and had little serious or personal in it." Those readers of Barnfield, however, who are acquainted with homosexual literature will scarcely fail to recognize a personal preoccupation in his poems. This is also the opinion of Moll in his Berühmte Homosexuelle.
[86] See appendix to my edition of Marlowe in the Mermaid Series, first edition. For a study of Marlowe's "Gaveston," regarded as "the hermaphrodite in soul," see J. A. Nicklin, Free Review, December, 1895.
[87] As Raffalovich acutely points out, the twentieth sonnet, with its reference to the "one thing to my purpose nothing," is alone enough to show that Shakespeare was not a genuine invert, as then he would have found the virility of the loved object beautiful. His sonnets may fairly be compared to the In Memoriam of Tennyson, whom it is impossible to describe as inverted, though in his youth he cherished an ardent friendship for another youth, such as was also felt in youth by Montaigne.
[88] A scene in Vanbrugh's Relapse, and the chapter (ch. li) in Smollett's Roderick Random describing Lord Strutwell, may also be mentioned as evidencing familiarity with inversion. "In our country," said Lord Strutwell to Rawdon, putting forward arguments familiar to modern champions of homosexuality, "it gains ground apace, and in all probability will become in a short time a more fashionable vice than simple fornication."
[89] These observations on eighteenth century homosexuality in London are chiefly based on the volumes of Select Trials at the Old Bailey, published in 1734.
[90] Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. iv, p. 885), who has studied Byron from this point of view, considers that, though his biography has not yet been fully written on the sexual side, he was probably of bisexual temperament; Raffalovich (Uranisme et Unisexualité, p. 309) is of the same opinion.
[91] A youthful attraction of this kind in a poet is well illustrated by Dolben, who died at the age of nineteen. In addition to a passion for Greek poetry he cherished a romantic friendship of extraordinary ardor, revealed in his poems, for a slightly older schoolfellow, who was never even aware of the idolatry he aroused. Dolben's life has been written, and his poems edited, by his friend the eminent poet, Robert Bridges (The Poems of D. M. Dolben, edited with a Memoir by R. Bridges, 1911).
[92] A well-informed narrative of the Oscar Wilde trial is given by Raffalovich in his Uranisme et Unisexualité, pp. 241–281; the full report of the trial has been published by Mason. The best life of Wilde is probably that of Arthur Ransome. André Gide's little volume of reminiscences, Oscar Wilde (also translated into English), is well worth reading. Wilde has been discussed in relation to homosexuality by Numa Praetorius (Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, vol. iii, 1901). An instructive document, an unpublished portion of De Profundis, in which Wilde sought to lay the blame for his misfortune on a friend—his "ancient affection" for whom has, he declares, been turned to "loathing, bitterness, and contempt,"—was published in the Times, 18th April, 1913; it clearly reveals an element of weakness of character.
[93] T. Wright, Life of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. i, p. 158.
[94] Most of these were carelessly lost or destroyed by Posh. A few have been published by James Blyth, Edward Fitzgerald and 'Posh,' 1908.
[95] It is as such that Whitman should be approached, and I would desire to protest against the tendency, now marked in many quarters, to treat him merely as an invert, and to vilify him or glorify him accordingly. However important inversion may be as a psychological key to Whitman's personality, it plays but a small part in Whitman's work, and for many who care for that work a negligible part. (I may be allowed to refer to my own essay on Whitman, in The New Spirit, written nearly thirty years ago.)
[96] I may add that Symonds (in his book on Whitman) accepted this letter as a candid and final statement showing that Whitman was absolutely hostile to sexual inversion, that he had not even taken its phenomena into account, and that he had "omitted to perceive that there are inevitable points of contact between sexual inversion and his doctrine of friendship." He recalls, however, Whitman's own lines at the end of "Calamus" in the Camden edition of 1876:—
"Here my last words, and the most baffling,
Here the frailest leaves of me, and yet my strongest-lasting,
Here I shade down and hide my thoughts—I do not expose them,
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems."
[97] Whitman's letters to Peter Doyle, an uncultured young tram-conductor deeply loved by the poet, have been edited by Dr. Bucke, and published at Boston: Calamus: A Series of Letters, 1897.
[98] Whitman acknowledged, however (as in the letter to Symonds already referred to), that he had had six children; they appear to have been born in the earlier part of his life when he lived in the South. (See a chapter on Walt Whitman's children in Edward Carpenter's interesting book, Days with Walt Whitman, 1906.) Yet his brother George Whitman said: "I never knew Walt to fall in love with young girls, or even to show them marked attention." And Doyle, who knew him intimately during ten years of late life, said: "Women in that sense never came into his head." The early heterosexual relationship seems to have been an exception in his life. With regard to the number of children I am informed that, in the opinion of a lady who knew Whitman in the South, there can be no reasonable doubt as to the existence of one child, but that when enumerating six he possibly included grandchildren.
[99] While the homosexual strain in Walt Whitman has been more or less definitely admitted by various writers, the most vigorous attempts to present the homosexual character of his personality and work are due to Eduard Bertz in Germany, and to Dr. W. C. Rivers in England. Bertz has issued three publications on Whitman: see especially his Der Yankee-Heiland, 1906, and Whitman-Mysterien, 1907. The arguments of Rivers are concisely stated in a pamphlet entitled Walt Whitman's Anomaly (London: George Allen, 1913). Both Bertz and Rivers emphasize the feminine traits in Whitman. An interesting independent picture of Whitman, at about the date of the letter to Symonds, accompanied by the author's excellent original photographs, is furnished by Dr. John Johnston, A Visit to Walt Whitman, 1898. It may be