Outlaw Marriages (7 page)

Some scholars who have studied Warren's life and work have argued that he had a larger goal in mind when he began collecting homoerotic art. One author has written that Warren's intention was to “break down Puritan inhibitions and hypocrisy” with regard to sexual activities between men. A second scholar has stated that Warren's objective was to establish that male-to-male sexual activity was fully accepted in the advanced societies of ancient Greece and Rome, thereby implying that homosexuality should also be accepted in contemporary America.
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Whatever the motivation, Warren's effort to acquire homoerotic art received a huge boost in 1911 when he found and purchased a magnificent Roman piece that ultimately would become known as the Warren Cup. Made of silver and dating back to the first century A.D., the item stood about six inches high. The exquisitely detailed relief work on the cup clearly depicted two sets of men engaging in anal intercourse.
45

In the years that followed, Warren purchased other antiquities decorated with scenes of men participating in homosexual activities. One important item was a two-handled Greek terra-cotta vase dating back to the sixth century B.C. and decorated with a scene of two young men lying together while one masturbated. Warren also acquired several fragments of Roman pottery molds, dating back to the first century A.D., that showed men having oral intercourse
with each other.
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Precisely when the collection left Lewes House and was accepted—Warren donated the items rather than charging for them—by the Boston museum isn't entirely clear. That uncertainty evolved from Warren's concern that American customs authorities wouldn't allow homoerotic materials to enter the United States, so he obscured their identity. The first of the items were among the ninety-two “miscellaneous objects” that Warren shipped to Boston in 1913, and additional items followed over the next two decades.
47

While it's not known exactly when the homoerotic antiquities went to Boston, there's no question where museum officials put them: in the basement. The pieces remained in storage, because of their controversial nature, until the 1970s when officials finally decided that sex between men was an acceptable subject for public art exhibitions.
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There's also no question that Warren ultimately made both homoerotic art and homosexuality more acceptable in the United States. In the words of the authors of one book about collecting, “Without Ned Warren, we would know much less than we do about homosexuality and classical art.”
49

By the early 1920s, Warren had become the world's leading authority on homoerotic antiquities, while he continued to consult with John and Mary Marshall on acquiring conventional classical artwork for the Met.
50

From 1910 on, the three collectors were together almost constantly. Indeed, other than at night when the two men shared the master bedroom and Mary Marshall slept in a separate bedroom down the hall, they spent virtually every hour with each other. While at Lewes House, the trio worked out of the same study during daylight hours, spent their evenings reading or listening to music in one of the manor house's parlors, and ate their meals while seated around the same table in the baronial dining room. And when their collecting enterprise called for a trip to Rome, the three of them traveled as a group and then took up residence in their apartment there to conduct business.
51

By 1915, they also were spending a good deal of time pampering themselves. As often as they could, they traveled to a spa at Bagni di Lucca, a village in the Tuscany region of Italy, where they lived in a sixteenth-century villa. Mary Marshall was drawn to the thermal waters at the spa because they relieved some of the pain she suffered from rheumatism, and John Marshall thought the soothing waters helped treat his liver ailments. For Warren, the appeal was being able to relax in the tiny village with the two people who'd become his life companions as well as his two closest professional colleagues.
52

That three-person collaboration had enormous benefits, although public
recognition went only to the two male members of the group. Renowned classical scholar John Davidson Beazley said at the time, “Warren and Marshall had complete control of the market in classical antiquities. Almost everything that was good, whether a new find or an old, came to them for first refusal. Competition all but ceased.” Another antiquities scholar said, in 2003, that the combined works the two men were responsible for bringing to Boston and New York represent “the greatest collection of Greek and Roman art in the world.”
53

Life changed somewhat for the men in 1925 when Mary Marshall died, which meant the two men lost the woman who had spent more than two decades with them. And then, two years later, John Marshall died as well, while he was still working as the Met's agent in Europe. Marshall's took his last breath while Ned Warren sat at his bedside. Servants reported that the dying man's final words were, “Good-bye, Puppy.”
54

One of the couple's closest friends later said, “Ned was ready to die after John's death,” telling the people around him that he was “quietly putting his house in order before departure.” Warren made that exit in 1928, just one year after Marshall had died.
55

The
New York Times
published an obituary after Warren's death. That story didn't acknowledge the forty-three-year outlaw marriage that Warren had enjoyed, stating only that the deceased “had been associated with John Marshall of Rome, Italy, in making collections for museums in this country.”
56

Marshall and Warren had given their secretary detailed directions, several years earlier, as to where and how they were to be buried. The location was in the English cemetery in Bagni di Lucca, where their bodies and that of Mary Marshall were to rest under a large marble monument inscribed with the respective birth and death dates of the three of them. Marshall and Warren stipulated that a simple Grecian urn was to be placed on top of the monument as a poignant symbol of their life's work.
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Breaking New Ground in Social Reform and Global Peace

…

In the early 1900s, Jane Addams was the most admired woman in America. She rose to national prominence in the 1890s as the founder of Hull House, a daring social experiment that brought upper-class young women into a poverty-stricken neighborhood so they could help the poor. Building on that success, Addams became widely recognized, early in the new century, as one of the nation's most esteemed social reformers.

When the United States was on the brink of entering World War I, Addams moved from the national stage to the global one, as she led the first meeting of peace activists from around the world. That effort—combined with a string of others that occurred before, during, and after the fighting—propelled Addams into becoming, in 1931, the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Addams wouldn't have been able to enrich the nation and the world to the
degree that she did if it hadn't been for Mary Rozet Smith, her life partner for more than four decades. Smith, who was from a wealthy and socially prominent family, provided the financial backing that kept Hull House afloat. She also persuaded many of her well-heeled friends to open their pocketbooks and donate money to the settlement house.

On a more personal level, Smith consistently served as the guardian who kept Addams, who suffered from severe health problems, from physically overexerting herself.

Jane Addams was born into a prosperous family in Cedarville, Illinois, in 1860. Her father owned the largest flour mill in the northern section of the state, and her mother bore and cared for nine children before she died, while in childbirth, when Jane was two years old.
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From an early age, Addams felt a driving need to make a difference in the world. Her initial dream was to attend medical school, but her father vetoed that idea and insisted that she follow a more traditional path for a young woman of the time. So she attended the Rockford Female Seminary, located near her home, that offered courses in the humanities and foreign languages.
2

About the time she completed her studies, Addams experienced a major medical crisis. She'd suffered from tuberculosis as a child, and she'd endured severe back pain throughout her teens. In 1882, she was hospitalized and wore a cast made of steel and whalebone for six months. Her doctors warned Addams that her health would always be precarious and that, therefore, she should avoid stress and overexertion.
3

In 1888, Addams traveled to Europe with a former seminary classmate, Ellen Starr. The highlight of the trip came in London when the two young women went to Toynbee Hall in one of the city's poor neighborhoods and learned about the settlement house operated by Oxford University graduates. The wealthy young men worked at businesses downtown during the day and offered classes to their largely uneducated neighbors in the evenings and on weekends.
4

Mary Rozet Smith was born into one of the wealthiest families in Chicago in 1868, her father having amassed a fortune by founding a paper company.
5

Smith attended one of the city's most exclusive private schools, receiving a general education that prepared her to become a teacher either at her alma mater or another private school. At the same time, the girl's mother taught her how to dress, groom, and behave in the manner expected of a debutante. Mary's parents also exposed her to the world of Renaissance art by having her travel to Europe with them on several occasions.
6

Toward the end of her teenage years, Smith began to question if she'd be
satisfied either with a social life consisting of cotillions and lavish dinner parties or with a married life defined by pleasing a husband and raising children.
7

Friends and relatives who knew Smith as a young adult described her as “gentle,” “shy,” “dutiful,” and “self-effacing,” and characterized her as the kind of person who “preferred to stay out of the limelight” and was “perfectly content to remain in the background.”
8

Jane Addams had, with her visit to Toynbee Hall, found her life's work. She and Ellen Starr returned to the United States and set out to create a settlement house in Chicago, but with one major difference from the one they'd seen in London: theirs would be operated entirely by women.
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For the location, they chose a dilapidated mansion that businessman Charles J. Hull had built thirty years earlier before the neighborhood had been taken over by recent immigrants who were crammed into tenement houses. Addams financed the venture with the inheritance she received from her father, who had died while she was at the seminary. Hull House opened its doors in 1889.
10

Addams and Starr, who at first were the only residents at the settlement house, initially organized only activities for children. A kindergarten class focused on helping six-year-olds learn to count and spell, while a second class concentrated on introducing the joys of drawing to older children. The two women next created activities for adults in the form of weekly receptions—one for Germans and others for Greeks, Italians, and Russians—where food was served and participants were encouraged to chat, sing, and dance.
11

After these activities attracted large numbers of people to Hull House, the two women began offering academic classes. Addams taught literature, having her students read a particular book and then discuss it, while Starr taught the history of Italian and Russian art.
12

Addams and Starr quickly realized that if they had any hope of serving the throngs of poor immigrants who were coming to Hull House, they'd need help from other upper-class young women. One of the first nonresident volunteers was Mary Rozet Smith, who came to the settlement house within a month after it opened.
13

Smith's initial work, in keeping with her training as a teacher, involved immigrant boys. With a goal of getting the young men off the streets, she bought pool tables and chess sets for them to use. Smith also read aloud to the boys. “They listened with enchanted attention,” according to one Addams biographer. “Their young imaginations took wing; each boy could feel himself
capable of great things. They chose to call their group the Young Heroes Club.”
14

Smith's volunteering quickly expanded. She began teaching a kindergarten class and then was put in charge of the music classes that were added to the schedule of activities. She also lent a hand with the planning, rehearsing, and presenting of dramatic productions that featured recent immigrants in the leading roles.
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