Who Was John Addington Symonds?
by Wik Wikholm
Briton John Addington Symonds was such a vocal defender of "sexual
aberrations" that one man nicknamed him "Soddington Symonds." Yet
Symonds, who co-authored the first English book about
homosexuality, was wracked with guilt about his own sexual tastes.
Symonds was born in 1840 to a pious doctor who taught his son to adhere
to
strict Puritan morality. His father enrolled him into a prestigious
boarding
school, and the boy experienced a crisis. "It was the moral state of the
school," he wrote in his memoirs. "Here and there one could not avoid
seeing
acts of onanism, mutual masturbation, the sport of naked boys in bed
together. They filled me with disgust and loathing."
Symonds' moralism put him in a tough spot. He was sexually attracted to
the
other boys and even became romantically involved with a choirboy, Willie
Dyer, but he kept the relationship chaste. Symonds' romance continued
even
after he graduated and matriculated at Oxford, where he became
enthralled
with the classics. Ancient Greek literature especially interested
Symonds,
Greek pederasty seeming to validate his feelings for Willie.
When Symonds confessed his feelings for Willie to his father, Dr.
Symonds told him
to end the relationship. Symonds complied, fearing for his career.
Hoping
to overcome his sexual desires, Symonds married Catherine North, but his
plan
failed. After four years of marriage, Symonds, now teaching literature,
fell
in love with a 19-year-old student. The relationship did not last, but
his
first experience of male-male sex so wonderful that he asked his wife to
forgo sex.
Symonds' academic career ended abruptly in 1871 due to his tuberculosis.
Symonds
moved his family to a Swiss village, where he began writing what
amounted to
more than 35 volumes on history and literature. But what he most enjoyed
writing was poetry, which one biographer has called "execrable." Awful
or not,
the poems Symonds wrote gave him a forum in which to celebrate male-male
sex.
When Symonds' health permitted, he traveled to Venice. There he met
Angelo
Fusato, a handsome gondolier. The two developed a sexual relationship
that
lasted the rest of Symonds' life, but he still struggled with Puritan
guilt.
He read medical literature and the work of German scholar Karl Ulrichs
about
his "abnormality." Both Ulrichs and the doctors wrote that male
homosexuality
was a result of inborn effeminacy.
Symonds also found solace in Walt Whitman's poetry, notably his
portraits of manly comradeship. Beginning in 1871, Symonds exchanged
many
letters with the American poet. In 1890, he asked Whitman if the love of
comrades entailed "physical intimacies." In August of that year, Whitman
wrote back that Symonds' "morbid inferences" were "damnable." Whitman
scholars have never explained why the poet, a man who had romances with
several men, erupted so furiously, but Symonds was crushed.
Without Whitman's support, Symonds wrote one of the first and boldest
defenses of male love in 19th-century England. In 1891, Symonds
privately
printed "A Problem in Modern Ethics." He argued that "abnormal
inclinations"
are inborn and unchangeable, and that laws against male-male sex are
unjust.
Now convinced that scientific arguments were the best justification for
"abnormality," Symonds approached a physician named Havelock Ellis and
asked
him to collaborate on a book. The result was Sexual Inversion,
the first
book-length study of homosexuality in England.
Symonds died in 1893. Sexual Inversion was still incomplete, but
when its
first editions appeared, his name was on the title page. Anxious to
preserve
Symonds' literary reputation, his literary executor asked Ellis to
remove it.
Ellis complied, and Symonds's contribution was forgotten until 1964,
when a
biographer retold his story.
Wik Wikholm produces www.gayhistory.com, an introduction to modern gay
history.
He can be reached on the site's discussion boards, or by e-mail at
wik@gayhistory.com.
Further Reading:
Ellis, Havelock and John Addington Symonds. Sexual Inversion.
London:
Longman's (1897). Reprinted 1994. New York: Ayer.
Grosskurth, Phyllis. John Addington Symonds: A Biography. London:
Longmans (1964). Reprinted 1975. New York: Arno.
Norton, Rictor. "The Life of John Addington Symonds." The Life and
Writings
of John Addington Symonds. Updated Nov. 6, 1999.
Symonds, John Addington. Phyllis Grosskurth, ed. The Memoirs of John
Addington Symonds. The Secret Life of a Leading Nineteenth-Century Man
of
Letters. New York: Random House (1984).
|
|
| PlanetOut Direct |
News to You
Get PlanetOut News headlines mailed directly to you now!
|
|
Search
