Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (24 page)

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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Page 67
charming, gentle, generous, honest himself and unsuspicious of other people's honesty"this in contrast to Dolby, the "gladsome gorilla," who was "large and ruddy, full of life and strength and spirits, a tireless and energetic talker, and always overflowing with good nature and bursting with jollity."
4
Literary historians have not failed to note the obvious personality differences between Mark Twain and Stoddard; and when the two men are compared, it is never to Stoddard's advantage. Fred Lorch. for instance, asserts that "Twain was fond of the Californian despite the fact that he was somewhat effeminate, unworldly, and given to religious enthusiasms."
5
Paul Fatout agrees that Stoddard was "a gentle, unworldy man, good-hearted, sensitive, somewhat effeminate, yet hearty enough to have been the 'Prince Charlie' of boisterous San Francisco adventures in the sixties."
6
What Lorch and Fatout ignore is that Mark Twain liked having Stoddard around not despite, but because of his difference from the California "redskins." If anyone was slightly out of place in London, it was Mark Twain, not Stoddard. It made good sense for him to hire a ''paleface" secretary to deal with the British. Lorch and Fatout also do not perceive that it was precisely Stoddard's androgynous nature that made him not only charming company in general but also a welcome companion to a man whose own sense of masculinity could be enhanced by Stoddard's apparent lack of it.
In January 1874, after seeing off Mark Twain at Liverpool, Stoddard stopped in Chester on his way back to London. There he had a chance encounter with a young man, Robert William Jones, to whom he became attached. The feeling went deeper for Bob Jones, who was later to besiege his "dearest friend" with passionate letters. Stoddard, however, was by then preoccupied with the pleasures of Charlotte Street, where the
Punch
illustrator Wallis Mackay kept his rooms. Mackay lived with a drama critic and an actor; with the addition of Stoddard, the four made up a "community of confirmed stags." Their dedication to the joys of bachelorhood was so strict that "women were forbidden the premises." Certain young men, on the other hand, were always welcome, and the revels sometimes endedand here Stoddard is surely exaggerating againwith fellows sleeping "about six in a bed."
With these new friends, Stoddard proceeded to violate all of Bierce's canons for good behavior. Stoddard recalled that there had been a good deal of mutual, and often drunken, affection. It is likely that Stoddard slept with some of these young men. He also "took an occasional prowl
 
Page 68
in the dark parks, where we saw the shadow of much that was past finding out, and caught fragments of human history from the lips of woe that were wonderfully tragic and impressive"
(EE 3
44-45). The "fragments of human history" were possibly similar to those being collected by Krafft-Ebing, tales that would serve both to sadden and to excite a visiting American. One of the most tragic and impressive stories then making the rounds concerned Simeon Solomon, the promising Bohemian artist, who had been convicted earlier that year for committing an "indecent act" in a public lavatory. Whatever else happened to Stoddard during his evening prowls, he avoided arrest.
During his stay with Wallis Mackay, Chatto and Windus brought out
South-Sea Idyls,
under the title
Summer Cruising in the South Seas,
in a handsome edition that seemed to please Stoddard at the time. "It will be very pretty," he had told his sister before Christmas 1873, "with twenty-five illustrations and fancy cover."
7
Many years later, however, W. D. Howells recalled that Stoddard had been "scandalized" by these illustrations, which so ''grossly misrepresented the nature of the harmless story."
8
In his "Introductory Letter" to the 1892 edition of
South-Sea Idyls,
Howells wrote: "Your London publisher defamed your delicate and charming text with illustrations so vulgar and repulsive that I do not think anyone could have looked twice inside the abominable cover."
9
Apparently, some readers did not look twice; for Stoddard, in an inscription in one copy of the book, referred to "an air of vulgarity that frightened the Critics" and that led them to call him "an immoral person."
10
But Stoddard seemed also to dissociate himself from such reactions in the very reporting of them; and it is unlikely that he had ever been "scandalized"although he may have allowed Howells to think otherwisesince the illustrations in question had been drawn by none other than Wallis Mackay. As to their being a "vulgar and repulsive" misrepresentation, Howells probably meant not that Mackay had homosexualized the drawingssomething that would have been unsurprising, given the atmosphere of his Charlotte Street chambersbut rather that Mackay had
heterosexualized
the sketches, showing many more naked maidens than actually appear in the "harmless" tales. In fact, the drawings do not seem to be very sexy from any viewpoint. They are, as Carl Stroven has noted, simply "bad,"
11
the products of an uninspired and untalented pen that make Stoddard's characters look weird and pathetic rather than charming.
 
Page 69
II
Soon after the publication of
Summer Cruising,
Stoddard decided to visit Joaquin Miller in Rome. "O God! Here is peace! Cross The Rubicon," Miller had urged; and Stoddard was ready to explore new territory for his
Chronicle
sketches, for which he had nearly exhausted his impressions of England. Stoddard's first days in Rome were not altogether merry, as he had managed to lose not only his luggage but also his jacket, which contained his money and Miller's address. He finally spotted Miller at the English bank near the Spanish Steps, "where one is pretty sure to meet most of the Americans in town." Their accounts of the meeting differ. According to Stoddard, Miller was unrecognizably
wrapped in a long cloak, with a broad-brimmed, high crowned hat slouched over his eyes. He seemed to limp without limping, and heaved his shoulders like a stage-sailor in a heavy sea. . . . I wondered who he was, and had concluded to class him with those modern artists who do the picturesque professionally, when, to my amazement, he stalked toward me, unshrouded himself, stretched out a hand loaded with massive gold rings, and greeted me with a smile which was half a welcome and half a reproof.
With this "modified edition of the original Joaquin, adapted to continental circulation," Stoddard icily "froze together, as it were; and, with scarcely three words of greeting on either side."
12
According to Miller, Stoddard seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown: "a pale, slim ghost" who "crept out of the shadows . . .  and laid its head on my shoulder, while tears ran down its face. I rated him soundly and roundly for depending on his saints all the time. But he excused his saints by saying he had forgotten his saints for a second to think of me and so got into trouble. I marvelled that he did not take the fatal Roman fever and die."
13
At any rate, Miller wined and dined the hapless Stoddard and offered him temporary lodgings in his own dingy room, which smelled like a stable and was decorated with cheap gimcracks. Stoddard soon moved elsewhere, but he continued to rely on Miller to show him around Rome, and they spent a lot of time drinking wine at the Cafe Greco.
As a Catholic, it was Stoddard's duty and, of course, his great pleasure to play the role of pilgrim in Rome. He especially enjoyed visiting the American College, where he soon made friends among his countrymen who were studying for the priesthood there. More than anywhere
 
Page 70
else in Rome, Stoddard felt completely at home among the "strapping big fellows from the Far West, the angular fellows from the East, the elegant fellows from the South."
14
For his chum Stoddard chose a "gentle, trustful, sympathetic" seminarian named Dan Paul, of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The two spent the week after Easter on a walking tour of Genzano and Lake Neimi, using the
casino
of a marchesa as their headquarters. It was Dan Paul who told Stoddard about the
Ave Maria
and its editor, Father Daniel Hudson of Notre Dame. Sometimes Stoddard would dine with the other seminarians at the American College. "You would have thought I had taken orders myself,'' Stoddard recalled, "if you could have seen the brotherly way some of those novitiates and I nodded to each other over our glasses!"
15
The idea of taking orders, always in the back of Stoddard's mind. often came to the fore during these Roman days. In May 1874, he wrote to a friend that he was greatly tempted to "bury myself out of this world in the seclusion of one of these monasteries. I never pass one here but I keel a little over to that side."
16
When he was presented to Pope Pius IX. His Holiness told Stoddard, "with a twinkle in his eye," that he "should try to be good."
17
But just as he felt drawn to the spiritual element in Rome, he also responded to the sensual side of the city, especially as spring turned into summer.
Not so voluptuous as Hawaii, perhaps, Rome was intoxicating just the same. The police were "gorgeous"; the Swiss Guards, who looked "like nothing else under heaven," were "gorgeous"; everywhere Stoddard saw gorgeous Italian men who made him sigh and melt.
18
He wanted someone who would be as sympathetic as Dan Paul but physically demonstrative as well. He was apparently able to find such men, at least for a few hours. In May he wrote that "friends follow me or meet me wherever I am, and friends blossom out in a nightnew friends, like the night-blooming cereus, full of strength and fragrance and satisfying beauty." Alas, he added, these friendships
"don't last any too long."
19
Somewhere between the spiritual and the sexual extremes of Rome was the sometimes brilliant social life in which Stoddard was eventually caught up. He made the rounds of artists' and sculptors' studios, enjoying a glass of wine and a smoke with such men as William Graham, Randolph Rogers, and Charles Carrol Coleman. In company with some of these American Bohemians, Stoddard often spent his evenings at the opera or the theater. Fete days and carnivals were always of special interest, especially when they required everyone to don elaborate cos-
 
Page 71
tumes. At the "Fete of the Stags" in the Campagna, Stoddard hardly knew where to look first: men in fourteenth-century costumes were walking arm in arm; "Greek sailors" were sporting scarlet caps and brief trousers; and prancing on horseback was an elaborately gowned man pretending to be Queen Elizabeth.
20
The American artist of greatest interest to Stoddard"the man I like best in Rome"
21
was Eugene Benson, who had already achieved some recognition in America for his essays in the
Atlantic Monthly?
In a studio adorned with Damascus tiles, Japanese screens, and draperies from the Levant, Benson painted souvenirs of his recent trip to the Mideast. He had recently married Henriette Malon Cooley Fletcher, a charming, cultivated, and wealthy woman of Swiss extraction, who was old enough to be his mother. But it was Mrs. Fletcher's eighteen-year-old daughter, Julia (nicknamed "Dudee"), who made the greater impression on Stoddard and who years later was to appear in
For the Pleasure of His Company
in the guise of Miss Juno. Attracted to "Dudee's" androgynous qualities, Stoddard engaged with her in animated and philosophical discussions about the mysteries of masculinity and femininity. Stoddard also helped her to launch a literary career that summer. Under the pen name of "George Fleming," she later wrote a number of novels and plays, including
Kismet (1877).
Meanwhile, Stoddard was concerned with advancing his own literary career. "I was never so full of projects as at this moment," he wrote to his sister Sarah in July 1874; "I have material for a half dozen volumes."
22
He sought Bierce's advice on the possibility of collecting his nontropical, "and therefore moral," tales from the
Overland Monthly
"Hearts of Oak," he thought, might be issued separately as a novel for children.
23
In addition, he wrote to John Carmany of the
Overland Monthly
that he had an idea for what he was to begin calling his "San Francisco novel.'' Carmany was already publishing some of Stoddard's British sketches in the
Overland Monthly,
and every Sunday the
San Francisco Chronicle
was featuring (in the upper left corner of the front page) his articles about Italy. They ranged from "Interviewing the Pope" to "The Theaters of Rome." Then, suddenly, they stopped; for Stoddard had been thrown by a horse!
The mishap occurred one June night while he was riding across the campagna with two Italian youths. Stoddard shattered his left forearm, and after surgery he remained in a hospital until July. For the rest of his life he could not fully bend that elbow. After he recovered, he began

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