Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard by Roger Austen Page A
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Authors: Roger Austen
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wheels of his chariothad he only given me the chance. In the last pathetic moments of commencement-daywhen every heart was in its unaccustomed throatsuddenly the Match-King turned upon meupon me, his abject slaveand protested love of me; and would have me pass my vacation at his Palace; and sit upon his right hand, that he might make mine enemies my footstool; other unspeakable attractions were offered too numerous to mention.
What did thy servant? With one momentary, far away glance that did not admit him or the likes of him within its range, I dismissed his overtures with a wave of my hand as something impossibly presumptuous, and soared away.
The spell was broken. My hour of deliverance had come. At that moment moment [sic] he crumbled before mea creature of the commonest clayand on the hights [sic] of Olympus there was loud laughter among the Gods.
Moral: We are ever human even if we seem divine. 11
"The Spell-binder" describes the sort of relationship that Stoddard often sought and usually suffered through. Moreover, its self-deprecating subtitle"one of the reasons why I should be despised and rejected"abounds in implications for homosexual identity in the nineteenth century.
Until the day he died, Stoddard was almost constantly in love; and if there were no agreeable homosexual males nearby, which was often the case, Stoddard would, with a sigh, tumble for an attractive heterosexual male. With this point in mind, the streak of "masochism" that runs through "The Spell-binder" can be better understood. Time after time, falling in love had so conditioned Stoddard to expect rejection and suffering that he eventually accepted the proposition that, at least in his own case, a correlation existed between the two. The extent of his suffering seemed a measure and indeed a proof of his love. At least subconsciously, Stoddard felt he did not deserve to be loved by the
Page 24
godlike idols he worshiped; had they stepped down from their pedestals and loved him in return, his reaction would have been more consternation than joy. Renunciation became almost a way of life. He could, like Emily Dickinson, "wade GriefWhole Pools of it," but "the least push of Joy" had a tendency to startle and unnerve him as he watched his accustomed universe turn upside down. 12
III
How did Stoddard and others of his time define this kind of love that often brought with it such exquisite pain and so little pleasure? We have a clue in Stoddard's use of "should" in the phrase, "one of the reasons why I should be despised and rejected." As we have seen and will continue to see, many people of prominence and of various religious beliefs accepted rather than rejected Stoddard in spite of what must have been a general awareness that he was sexually "eccentric." To some extent, this acceptance is explained by the fact that Stoddard was a ''Bohemian" at a time when people indulged the "sins" and eccentricities of Bohemians with the understanding that they were more affectations than signs of depravity.
More to the point, however, Americans in the nineteenth century simply lacked the terms with which to define people like Stoddard. True, various slang terms implying sissiness (e.g., "Miss Nancy," "Charlotte-Ann," "Aunt Fancy") were in use, but none was necessarily synonymous with "pederast" or "sodomite," words that were unsavable and almost unthinkable in the polite society in which Stoddard generally moved. If heterosexuals had a hard time defining the homosexual (a term coined in 1869 by a Hungarian doctor), it can be imagined how baffling it must have been for homosexuals to try to define themselves. In the mid-nineteenth century there was almost no published literature on this subject for the layman to read, especially in America. As a result. young homosexuals often felt they were the only ones in the universe so afflicted, and, quite understandably, a great number of their self-definitions were idiosyncratic.
In Stoddard's case, we find some relevant
What did thy servant? With one momentary, far away glance that did not admit him or the likes of him within its range, I dismissed his overtures with a wave of my hand as something impossibly presumptuous, and soared away.
The spell was broken. My hour of deliverance had come. At that moment moment [sic] he crumbled before mea creature of the commonest clayand on the hights [sic] of Olympus there was loud laughter among the Gods.
Moral: We are ever human even if we seem divine. 11
"The Spell-binder" describes the sort of relationship that Stoddard often sought and usually suffered through. Moreover, its self-deprecating subtitle"one of the reasons why I should be despised and rejected"abounds in implications for homosexual identity in the nineteenth century.
Until the day he died, Stoddard was almost constantly in love; and if there were no agreeable homosexual males nearby, which was often the case, Stoddard would, with a sigh, tumble for an attractive heterosexual male. With this point in mind, the streak of "masochism" that runs through "The Spell-binder" can be better understood. Time after time, falling in love had so conditioned Stoddard to expect rejection and suffering that he eventually accepted the proposition that, at least in his own case, a correlation existed between the two. The extent of his suffering seemed a measure and indeed a proof of his love. At least subconsciously, Stoddard felt he did not deserve to be loved by the
Page 24
godlike idols he worshiped; had they stepped down from their pedestals and loved him in return, his reaction would have been more consternation than joy. Renunciation became almost a way of life. He could, like Emily Dickinson, "wade GriefWhole Pools of it," but "the least push of Joy" had a tendency to startle and unnerve him as he watched his accustomed universe turn upside down. 12
III
How did Stoddard and others of his time define this kind of love that often brought with it such exquisite pain and so little pleasure? We have a clue in Stoddard's use of "should" in the phrase, "one of the reasons why I should be despised and rejected." As we have seen and will continue to see, many people of prominence and of various religious beliefs accepted rather than rejected Stoddard in spite of what must have been a general awareness that he was sexually "eccentric." To some extent, this acceptance is explained by the fact that Stoddard was a ''Bohemian" at a time when people indulged the "sins" and eccentricities of Bohemians with the understanding that they were more affectations than signs of depravity.
More to the point, however, Americans in the nineteenth century simply lacked the terms with which to define people like Stoddard. True, various slang terms implying sissiness (e.g., "Miss Nancy," "Charlotte-Ann," "Aunt Fancy") were in use, but none was necessarily synonymous with "pederast" or "sodomite," words that were unsavable and almost unthinkable in the polite society in which Stoddard generally moved. If heterosexuals had a hard time defining the homosexual (a term coined in 1869 by a Hungarian doctor), it can be imagined how baffling it must have been for homosexuals to try to define themselves. In the mid-nineteenth century there was almost no published literature on this subject for the layman to read, especially in America. As a result. young homosexuals often felt they were the only ones in the universe so afflicted, and, quite understandably, a great number of their self-definitions were idiosyncratic.
In Stoddard's case, we find some relevant
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