Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade by justin spring
Authors: justin spring
Tags: Literary, General, Gay Studies, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, Psychology, Literary Criticism, Gay & Lesbian, 20th Century, Biography, Education, Authors; American, Art, Artists; Architects; Photographers, Pornography, Teaching Methods & Materials, Human Sexuality, Educators, College teachers, College teachers - Illinois - Chicago, Gay authors, Novelists; American - 20th century, Sexology - Research - United States - History - 20th century, Body Art & Tattooing, Gay authors - United States, Steward; Samuel M, Tattoo artists, Pornography - United States - History - 20th century, Novelists; American, Authors; American - 20th century, Tattoo artists - New York (State) - New York, Sexology, Poets; American, Poets; American - 20th century
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mind, “a man-city, healthy, sweaty and sensual. It is Gargantua with his head in Evanston, his feet in Gary, and he lies relaxed and smoldering along the lake front…the whole anatomy of the city his outstretched body.”
Even as he became habituated to anonymous encounters and street pickups, Steward was seeing three sex partners regularly that he also considered good friends: a doctor named Jacob Cohen, a worker named Jimmy Taylor, * and a serviceman named Bill Collins. * Collins was not just a bed-mate but a lover and intellectual equal whom Steward would eventually introduce to many of his literary friends, including Gertrude Stein.
Upon his return to the United States in the fall of 1937, Steward bought about twenty kitchen gadgets and sent them off to Stein and Toklas by way of a thank-you. Stein wrote back,
Alice is delighted with the gadgets she keeps them on a shelf on the best Italian furniture in the atelier with the best treasures, and she shows them with so much pride, they are so useful and so beautiful and so pale blue and we are so pleased with our Sammy and [have] so much to tell you…we saw the Rops and we talked endlessly about you and I am writing a life in French of Picasso.
Like many of the literary and artistic men who flocked to Stein in her later life, Steward both admired her genius and craved her motherly warmth and support. Deeply alcoholic and massively overworked, he seemed to many on the verge of a breakdown. In a letter to her of late fall 1937 he wrote:
To tell the truth, I am in a horrible state—one, I suppose, that has been growing for a long time. Something brought it to a climax and I can think of no other thing than that biography of Hart Crane which I have just finished. How horrible, how terrifying [his death was]—and particularly because I [sense] I am unconsciously following many of the same patterns he followed. * I think my personality has split—that sounds funny, but it has…In desperation I sat down last night and read some Whitman and for a little while forced myself into thinking he was right, and then I read one—oh, a very little one—in which he admitted he was wrong. It was “O Me! O Life!”…Do you remember it? “What good amidst these people, these faithless, these mean objects?” he asks. And his only answer: “that you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” But may I? Have I anything to begin with?
…Alas, I’m not drunk—I’ve found I can control that. And I feel I owe you an apology. I’ve just read this over, and I am strongly impelled to tear it up. But after an argument—no.
Stein responded calmly from her new home on Rue Christine, “We were all at dinner at the Rops and…they said if you were sad all you needed was Paris…I have meditated a lot about your letter perhaps it is better but you see the trouble it certainly was with Hart Crane, the question of being important inside in one…”
Steward would treasure this phrase (“the question of being important inside in one”) for years to come, for the question—that is, the question of self-esteem—was, he felt, the key to his alcoholism, and also to his inability to develop as a novelist and writer. He responded: “You are right, the question of being important inside oneself can either cause or cure a lot of trouble…when I find the solution I think…I will be whole again and can write and do the things I want.”
Steward was continuing his sexual acquaintance with Thornton Wilder during this time, but theirs was hardly a romance; although Wilder wrote to Steward with some regularity, he kept the contents of his letters breezily informal, and constantly misspelled Steward’s name as “Stewart,” as if to suggest the two men were barely acquainted. Even so, Steward noted in his memoirs,
Every time Thornton came to Chicago I would receive in advance a phone call or one of his chatty
Even as he became habituated to anonymous encounters and street pickups, Steward was seeing three sex partners regularly that he also considered good friends: a doctor named Jacob Cohen, a worker named Jimmy Taylor, * and a serviceman named Bill Collins. * Collins was not just a bed-mate but a lover and intellectual equal whom Steward would eventually introduce to many of his literary friends, including Gertrude Stein.
Upon his return to the United States in the fall of 1937, Steward bought about twenty kitchen gadgets and sent them off to Stein and Toklas by way of a thank-you. Stein wrote back,
Alice is delighted with the gadgets she keeps them on a shelf on the best Italian furniture in the atelier with the best treasures, and she shows them with so much pride, they are so useful and so beautiful and so pale blue and we are so pleased with our Sammy and [have] so much to tell you…we saw the Rops and we talked endlessly about you and I am writing a life in French of Picasso.
Like many of the literary and artistic men who flocked to Stein in her later life, Steward both admired her genius and craved her motherly warmth and support. Deeply alcoholic and massively overworked, he seemed to many on the verge of a breakdown. In a letter to her of late fall 1937 he wrote:
To tell the truth, I am in a horrible state—one, I suppose, that has been growing for a long time. Something brought it to a climax and I can think of no other thing than that biography of Hart Crane which I have just finished. How horrible, how terrifying [his death was]—and particularly because I [sense] I am unconsciously following many of the same patterns he followed. * I think my personality has split—that sounds funny, but it has…In desperation I sat down last night and read some Whitman and for a little while forced myself into thinking he was right, and then I read one—oh, a very little one—in which he admitted he was wrong. It was “O Me! O Life!”…Do you remember it? “What good amidst these people, these faithless, these mean objects?” he asks. And his only answer: “that you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” But may I? Have I anything to begin with?
…Alas, I’m not drunk—I’ve found I can control that. And I feel I owe you an apology. I’ve just read this over, and I am strongly impelled to tear it up. But after an argument—no.
Stein responded calmly from her new home on Rue Christine, “We were all at dinner at the Rops and…they said if you were sad all you needed was Paris…I have meditated a lot about your letter perhaps it is better but you see the trouble it certainly was with Hart Crane, the question of being important inside in one…”
Steward would treasure this phrase (“the question of being important inside in one”) for years to come, for the question—that is, the question of self-esteem—was, he felt, the key to his alcoholism, and also to his inability to develop as a novelist and writer. He responded: “You are right, the question of being important inside oneself can either cause or cure a lot of trouble…when I find the solution I think…I will be whole again and can write and do the things I want.”
Steward was continuing his sexual acquaintance with Thornton Wilder during this time, but theirs was hardly a romance; although Wilder wrote to Steward with some regularity, he kept the contents of his letters breezily informal, and constantly misspelled Steward’s name as “Stewart,” as if to suggest the two men were barely acquainted. Even so, Steward noted in his memoirs,
Every time Thornton came to Chicago I would receive in advance a phone call or one of his chatty
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