The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (106 page)

wrote Nijinsky. “I hated him, but pretended.”

“Chinchilla,” as Diaghilev was called because of the white streak in his dyed black hair, stripped his lover of independence. He scrutinized Nijinsky’s personal and professional life and warned him against ever sleeping with women, telling him such acts would impair his dancing. So persuasive and insistent was Diaghilev that Nijinsky once turned down a sexual offer from Isadora Duncan, whom the two men met in Venice in 1909. She had suggested to Nijinsky that he father her next baby, but he refused.

Diaghilev repeatedly encouraged his lover to consent to a
ménage à trois
with a young boy, but Nijinsky was already finding the act of love extremely difficult with just one person. By 23 he felt he was growing too old to be Diaghilev’s

“boy.” In September of 1913, while the entire Ballets Russes was en route to South America aboard the S.S.
Avon
, Nijinsky became engaged to coquettish Romola de Pulszky. She was 23 and the daughter of Hungarian actress Emilia Markus. Romola had been pursuing Nijinsky for months, had even taken up ballet in order to be near him. According to Hungarian tradition, the exchange of engagement rings authorized freedom to indulge in premarital intercourse.

But whether it was Nijinsky’s shyness, the couple’s language barrier, or his emphatic desire for a proper Catholic wedding, they did not consummate their romance until after their wedding on Sept. 10, 1913.

Diaghilev was surprised and insulted by this wedding and retaliated by firing Nijinsky. He refused to answer his former lover’s letters. Soon after the marriage, Nijinsky gained another ardent admirer. The Duchess of Durcal, a beautiful redhead, fell so desperately in love with him that she offered herself as his mistress. Romola had no objections, and Nijinsky had sex with the duchess at least once. He regretted it later, saying, “I am sorry for what I did. It was unfair to her, as I am not in love.”

As Nijinsky’s mental health began to deteriorate, he and Romola took separate bedrooms. Sometimes he would slip out at night and walk the streets, searching for prostitutes—just to talk. He would return home, sexually aroused by these women, and masturbate in his bedroom “in order to protect myself from catching a venereal disease.”

Romola gave birth to the first of their two daughters in 1914—the second was born in 1920—and a few years later Diaghilev reentered Nijinsky’s life.

Romola objected to Diaghilev’s peacemaking attempts and even brought a 500,000-franc lawsuit against him, as compensation for her husband’s past performances in the Ballets Russes. She won the suit, but Diaghilev never paid.

Instead he made an overt move to win back Romola’s husband. She pulled one way, Diaghilev pulled the other way, and Nijinsky, no longer dancing and with no outlet for his frustrations, lapsed into a catatonic world.

—A.K. and K.P.

The First Free-Lover

JOHN HUMPHREY NOYES (Sept. 3, 1811–Apr. 13, 1886)

HIS FAME:
John Humphrey Noyes,

social visionary and originator of the

term “free love,” gained notoriety in the

mid-19th century for preaching a form

of promiscuity and birth control to his

followers, who were called Perfectionists. He argued that since the Second

Coming had already occurred (in 70

A.D.) a sinless existence—perfection—

was possible on earth by simply accepting

Christ into one’s soul. These beliefs found

expression in his creation of the most

successful of American utopias, the

Oneida Community in New York State,

which thrived for over a quarter of a century and at its peak had 300 members.

HIS PERSON:
Noyes was raised by a strong and devout mother, who prayed that her firstborn son would become a minister. Business deals and a political career often kept his father away from their home in Brattleboro, Vt.

When Noyes was 20, he experienced a religious awakening. According to one of his biographers, “light gleamed upon his soul,” and by nightfall he had decided to devote himself to God. Another turning point in his life occurred three years later when he was a student at Yale Theological Seminary in New Haven. In a revelation that shocked the ecclesiastical world, Noyes made his “confession of salvation from sin.” Expelled from school and stripped of his preacher’s license, Noyes vowed to continue spreading his Perfectionist beliefs. This he did, eventually establishing the first of the self-sufficient communities of love among the saved in Putney, Vt. The unorthodox sex practices of these communities were probably influenced by still another event in his life. When he was 23 and a virgin, he experienced a traumatic rejection from his first love and first convert to the new religion. Thirty-one-year-old Abigail Merwin, his pretty “angel,” was very attracted to the fiery prophet, but she married a schoolteacher after her family persuaded her that Noyes was crazy. For several years Noyes pursued her, going so far as to follow her to her new home in Ithaca, N.Y., in the belief that they were joined in “immortal marriage” and before long she would realize her mistake. When that didn’t happen, he rejected conventional marriage. “When the will of God is done on earth there will be no marriage,” he wrote in a letter to a close

The Utopian Oneida community. John Humphrey Noyes standing in forefront
friend. As God’s representative, he resolved to create the perfect society, where

“marriage” is “free to every guest” but devoid of all “exclusiveness, jealousy, and quarreling.” That vision of a social arrangement which would protect him from emotional involvement and rejection was realized in the Oneida Community.

SEX LIFE:
“The Honorable John,” as Noyes was called by his many grandchildren, was not always filled with honorable intentions. As Father of the Community, he used his position to get whatever he wanted and whomever he wanted.

In an imperfect world, reasoned Noyes, one had to be practical. That was the justification he gave for marrying homely Harriet Holton, a wealthy heiress who had been sending him regular contributions. Though he felt “no particular love of the sentimental kind” for her, and despite the fact that just a year before their marriage he had spoken out against monogamy, he married her in order to stifle rumors of his promiscuity. The marriage was a disappointment. Harriet gave birth to four stillborn babies and only one live child during their first six years of matrimony. Unable to tolerate imperfection, Noyes found a solution in self-control during sex,
coitus reservatus
, or as he called it, “male continence.” It was essentially sexual intercourse without ejaculation. Noyes claimed that male continence was easy and that his wife’s experience was “very satisfactory, as it had never been before.” Apparently Harriet was able to have orgasms with this method. About this time Noyes felt an “increase of brotherly love” for a female disciple named Mary Cragin.

At the same time, Harriet fell in love with Mary’s husband, George. When

Noyes realized this, armed as he was with his “greatest discovery” of male continence, he decided it was time to begin his ideal society. Thus, in 1846,

“complex marriage” was born. A year later, charged with adultery, Noyes fled from Vermont to New York, where he established the Oneida Community.

By 1850 complex marriage was in full swing at Oneida. “Abound,” Noyes told members in 1869 (before that members tried not to have children). The female orgasm was a desired consequence of every sexual encounter, because the more love one gave, the closer to God one became. In theory, each woman was free to refuse any man’s advances—including those of her husband. But in actuality, women submitted to prominent members of the community out of fear of being criticized as selfish. Emotional attachments, even of a mother to her child, were considered selfish and sinful. After all, those personal feelings would undermine communal spirit. Once Noyes told a man who was devoted to a particular lady, “You do not love her, you love happiness.”

Promiscuity was rigorously enforced; violators were banished from the community or demoted in their work. To prevent unwanted pregnancies, young men were taught the art of self-control by older women, who were usually past menopause. Noyes appointed himself responsible for initiating women into the sexual experience.

SEX PARTNERS:
Practicing what he preached, Noyes took hundreds of lovers during his lifetime. His strong sex drive lasted well into his 60s, when he sired at least 9 of the 58 children born under the community’s selective breeding experiment. All the women, perhaps attracted more by his power than his looks, were eager to sleep with their spiritual leader. However, Noyes took particular delight in acting as “first husband” to the virgins—some as young as 10 years old, who had not even begun to menstruate. This practice got him into trouble in 1877 when jealous males, angry over his attempted monopoly on young girls, threatened to bring charges of statutory rape against him. With religious leaders also demanding action against the “ethics of the barnyard,” Noyes fled to Canada. Resettling at Niagara Falls, he died there at the age of 74, surrounded by his faithful wife, sisters, and a small group of followers.

HIS THOUGHTS:
“There is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law, than why eating or drinking should be—and there is as little occasion for shame in the one case as in the other.”

“It is as foolish and cruel to expend one’s seed on a wife merely for the sake of getting rid of it, as it would be to fire a gun at one’s best friend merely for the sake of unloading it.”

—S.L.W.

Arctic Explorer

ROBERT PEARY (May 6, 1856–Feb. 20, 1920)

HIS FAME:
The expedition officially

credited with being the first to reach the

North Pole—on Apr. 6, 1909—was led

by explorer Robert Edwin Peary. Peary

was also the first to offer conclusive evidence that Greenland was an island.

HIS PERSON:
Born in Cresson, Pa.,

Robert was not quite three years old

when his father died. Mary Wiley Peary

moved her only child to a small town

near Portland, Me. Peary’s pampered

childhood was less than pleasant—his

mother dressed him in girlish clothes,

including a bonnet to protect his fair

skin—and few boys his age would play

with what they called “a sissy.”

When Peary entered Bowdoin College, he was a tall and athletic man who was accepted by his peers, yet he lacked pleasing character traits. Later he was considered ruthless and driven, and he was often jealous of rival explorers. His dedication to his work was obsessive. Over the years, he uncomplainingly lost eight toes to frostbite. He was motivated by his own proclamation: “I don’t want to live and die without accomplishing anything or without being known beyond a narrow circle of friends.”

In 1886 he conducted his first exploration of the Far North and decided to make Arctic research his lifework. Teaming up with a black assistant named Matthew Henson—and often accompanied by his wife, Josephine—Peary spent the next 23 years traveling through the polar region and at times living among the Eskimos.