Bohemian bachelors

[mightymads]

Men and women sometimes experience certain difficulties in understanding each other even now, when we are raised side by side since kindergarten and learn to communicate with the opposite sex from an early age. In the 19th century segregation by gender and class reached its peak. Men and women were raised in their own homosocial circles, especially middle and upper classes. Even in servants’ quarters men’s and women’s parts were strictly segregated and located as far as possible from each other. Both sexes had to adhere to the social roles ascribed to them. A man was to provide while a woman to look after the household and not to bother her husband with domestic aspects. In this context the emotional and communicative gap between men and women is unsurprising. Since they lived virtually in different worlds which had few points of contact, it seems quite predictable that stronger emotional and intellectual bonds were formed between individuals of the same sex.

In homosocial schools it’s quite natural that boys would develop crushes on boys and girls on girls. It seems like in many public schools the slackness of discipline led to something far beyond innocent crushes:

“The talk in the dormitories and the studies was incredibly obscene. Here and there one could not avoid seeing acts of onanism, mutual masturbation, the sports of naked boys in bed together. There was no refinement, no sentiment, no passion; nothing but animal lust in these occurrences.”

—The Letters of John Addington Symonds, quoted from Sodom on the Thames by Morris B. Kaplan

“To repress every manifestation of passion is the cardinal directive of English home-training. The result is that schools of both sexes have become hot-beds of vice.”

—Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1895 (Sodom on the Thames )

Discipline was very strict at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school Arthur Conan Doyle attended. Here are his reminiscenes on the subject:

“The Jesuit teachers have no trust in human nature, and perhaps they are justified. We were never allowed for an instant to be alone with each other, and I think that the immorality which is rife in public schools was at a minimum in consequence. In our games and our walks the priests always took part, and a master perambulated the dormitories at night. Such a system may weaken self-respect and self-help, but it at least minimizes temptation and scandal.”

—Memories and Adventures, Arthur Conan Doyle (1924)

From this it’s easy to make a conclusion that Doyle was aware of homosexual contacts quite early on, and he might continue witness them in the university which was also all-male.

“If all persons guilty of Oscar Wilde’s offences were to be clapped into gaol, there would be a very surprising exodus from Eton and Harrow, Rugby and Winchester, to Pentonville and Holloway.”

—The Review of Reviews, W.T. Stead, 1895 (Sodom on the Thames)

In gentlemens’ clubs “the men in this exclusive miliue were linked by a tacit knowledge of the extent of homosexual relations in the all-male establishments from which they had emerged.” (London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914, by Matt Cook)

The word “bohemian” seemed to have obtained a particular connotation, especially in the course Oscar Wilde’s trials, as “one of the witnesses professed himself unsurprised when Wilde kissed a waitor at Kettners on account of the playwright’s bohemianism.” (Ibid.)

Now compare it with the way Doyle uses this word in his letters and autobiography:

“I fear that I was too Bohemian for them [his London relatives he visited in 1878] and they too conventional for me. However, they were kind to me, and I roamed about London for some time with pockets so empty that there was little chance of idleness breeding its usual mischief.”

—Memories and Adventures, Arthur Conan Doyle (1924)

“And first of all you will be glad to hear that I never was more happy in my life. I’ve got a strong Bohemian element in me, I’m afraid, and the life just seems to suit me. Fine honest fellows the men are and such a strapping lot.”

—in a letter to his mother about his life aboard a whaler, 1880

“I have become a most awful Bohemian from knowing so few ladies here (I always was inclined that way). Our circle is a bachelor one—and a pretty gay and festive one at that.”

—from a letter written in Southsea, 1883

“In many ways my marriage marked a turning-point in my life. A bachelor, especially one who had been a wanderer like myself, drifts easily into Bohemian habits, and I was no exception.”

—Memories and Adventures, Arthur Conan Doyle (1924)

It doesn’t exactly prove anything but it leaves room for speculation and sheds some light on Doyle’s sympathetic attitude towards homosexuality.