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Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards » Suspects » Druitt, Montague John » Some thoughts about M J Druitt » Archive through August 11, 2003 « Previous Next »

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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 127
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 6:26 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

With regard to Druitt's potential to absent himself from the school on Saturday afternoons when playing away cricket matches, a resident housemaster does not have to be on the premises at all times. Under today's circumstances, a rota of "masters on duty" will be the responsible adults from time to time, whether they are resident or not. (My brother, e.g., currently teaching part time at Kent College, which is just at the end of the road where he lives, goes in weekly for a long evening just to be the guaranteed adult teacher on the premises). And since Valentine was, if I remember aright, an old university friend of Druitt's, there would have been no friction in making arrangements for a stand-in to take on the duty mastership when needed.
With regard to the sexual insanity and the serious offence, none of us with experience of English prep schools - (i.e. private boarding schools for eight- to thirteen-year-olds, "preparing" them for the Common Entrance exam - largely Latin - which provided the pass list from which the public schools - private boarding schools taking pupils from thirteen+ to eighteen - could pick their intake of new boys) - none of us who know these places, I repeat, has any doubt at all that a "serious offence", successfully hushed up when an inquest followed, would be a matter of sexual interference with one of the boys. What two young ushers got up to with each other wouldn't necessarily have raised massive eyebrows among men who had all themselves been through prep and public schools, and in the process would have been aware of and most probably practised some form of homosexual activity with other boys. But masters interfering with boys was a no-no that everyone wanted hushed up: school and parents alike. At my own school, a little lad committed suicide after being caught in bed with a senior boy by his housemaster's wife. The little lad's parents colluded willingly with the school in hushing up at the inquest this obvious reason for the poor kid's stress, and presenting his suicide as a total mystery. I didn't learn the truth myself until twenty or more years after I'd left the school.
All the best,
Martin F
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Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris

Post Number: 366
Registered: 4-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 6:51 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Martin
Thanks for the comments.
I know somewhat the atmosphere of a "prep" school in that I taught at one for two years, but the one in which I worked was a day school and not boarding so the "hothouse" atmosphere was not present. However, I think the analogy is lost slightly in that it is apparent from tbe list of pupils in the 1881 census entry for George Valentine's school that it was not a prep school. there are 15 pupils listed and the ages range from to 14 to 17 years old and so the school at Eliot Place is obviously at the senior level.
Regards
Chris
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 130
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 7:10 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Chris!
Okay, so we're looking at an older age bracket in a private school which was not on the Headmasters' Conference list of "approved" public schools.
But the same criterion applies: staff sexual interference with the boys was not to be tolerated or admitted. The member of staff should be got rid of as quickly and quietly as possible. This happened when a junior master at my prep school was found to be having "inappropriate" friendships with little boys - (I didn't know him and don't know the details, except that the school ordered his instant resignation and never let anyone outside his colleagues know about it). And at my public school, a young matron who had an affair with a (lucky!) seventeen-year-old boy was quickly and quietly fired.
All the best,
Martin F
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz

Post Number: 258
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 10:50 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi All,

I do agree with Martin, and have no doubt Druitt would have been sacked, and the reason hushed up, if anyone had caught him behaving 'inappropriately' with one or more of his pupils. Everyone who knew anything about it would have had an interest in keeping it quiet.

At my brother's school, there was a master who was apparently an extremely good teacher and very popular with his pupils, who got away with it for years because he was careful not to be caught at it, there was not a single complaint made about him, and there was no breath of scandal that anything untoward was occurring. In other words, if any staff member or pupil knew, or suspected anything, they weren't going to make a fuss about it.

He was finally sacked, however, for hitting a pupil for the first and only reported time in his career. This was one thing everyone could and indeed had to make a big fuss about. The difference in the backlash, in terms of putting off parents of prospective new boys, can no doubt be appreciated. Now, if corporal punishment had not been outlawed, things could have been very different....

Love,

Caz
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Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100

Post Number: 85
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 12:20 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I have to say I don't really follow the line of argument here. If Druitt was sacked on the Friday for some sort of sexual interference with a pupil, no doubt the fear of disgrace would be a sufficient motive for his suicide. But in that case, the suicide note, with its expressed fear that he would "be like mother", doesn't seem to fit in.

Looking at it another way, the supposed offence wasn't very successfully "hushed up", as Druitt's dismissal was mentioned at the inquest and reported by a newspaper. Are we supposed to think that, after the evidence of the dismissal had been given, no one in court thought to ask why he had been dismissed?

Surely it would make more sense if the reason for Druitt's dismissal was somehow consistent with his fear of developing the same sort of mental illness that his mother had. (We know she suffered from delusions.)

Chris Phillips

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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 131
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 2:45 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Caz!
I thought I remembered that in the past you had mentioned family connections which meant that you were well aware of the ways of small private schools in dealing with staff pederasty.

Hi Chris!
I think you always have to bear in mind the appalling ignorance and naivety of late Victorians in sexual matters. E.M.Forster in his posthumously published homosexual novel "Maurice" has his hero seriously fear that he may be "an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde type" - (I think I'm quoting correctly from memory: I am quite certain that I have the dread of a pathological abnormality right). And Wilde himself, when at rock bottom in prison, believed that he had been prey to "a kind of madness" for many years - and he meant a natural proclivity to homosexuality, not hubris and infatuation with Bosie! So I find it quite plausible that a not very bright young man like Druitt should put together his mother's incarceration and his own traumatic exposure, and believe that these taken together indicated mental illness on his part. Remember that it was doctors, not ignorant laymen, who thought that masturbation caused insanity, and recorded it as the cause of Kosminsky's mental collapse. It's enough to make the hairs on the palms of your hands stand up!
All the best,
Martin F}
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 540
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 6:59 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi all

On the other hand, Monty may simply have got one of the maids into trouble (Chris Scott says there were two). I don't know if it's possible to ascertain whether either of these women gave birth in '89 - just to eliminate the possibility.

Robert
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Alan Hollamby
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 2:31 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I strongly feel that there is some misplaced or hidden information concerning MJD. Was this information concealed to protect the family ?
I can remember Daniel Farsons TV programme many years ago,when he only mentioned Druitt by initials only.
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Robert Charles Linford
Chief Inspector
Username: Robert

Post Number: 541
Registered: 3-2003
Posted on Friday, August 08, 2003 - 7:11 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Julie

This sounds like Dr Holt of Willesden, who has his own thread on the Casebook.

Robert
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Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100

Post Number: 86
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 4:48 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Martin Fido wrote:
And Wilde himself, when at rock bottom in prison, believed that he had been prey to "a kind of madness" for many years - and he meant a natural proclivity to homosexuality, not hubris and infatuation with Bosie!


That's interesting, and sent me to Google to try to find the quote in context.

I don't know whether this is what you had in mind - desribed as "the notoriously homophobic letter he wrote to the Home Secretary when asking to be let out of jail":
The petition of the…prisoner humbly sheweth that he does not desire to palliate in any way the terrible offences of which he was rightly found guilty, but to point out that such offences are forms of sexual madness…the most horrible form of erotomania which…left him the helpless prey of the most revolting passions, and of a gang of people who for their own profit ministered to them, and then drove him to his most hideous ruin. It is under the ceaseless apprehension lest this insanity, that displayed itself in monstrous sexual perversion before, may now extend to the entire nature and the intellect, that the petitioner writes this appeal…
http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/bentley_sp01.html

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be notorious enough for the full text to be available on the Internet.

Even here, it's not clear to me whether "sexual madness" is referring to homosexuality as such, or rather the "erotomania" that resulted in Wilde's promiscuous behaviour. Nevertheless, it's the closest I've seen to a contemporary use of this phraseology in relation to homosexuality.

Chris Phillips

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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 133
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 7:18 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

That's the piece, Chris. There's a summary of more of the petition, but with shorter direct quotation on pp.471-2 of Ellmann's biography, and he gives Wilde's letters and Home Office papers as sources. Ellmann crtainly gives the impression that the "madness" Wilde admitted was homosexuality and not "erotomaniac" promiscuity: it was well enough known that certain MPs had strenuously resisted raising the age of consent for years, and they were mocked as "the old whoremasters", so the House of Commons would not have thought the frequency of Wilde's intercourse with purveyors of commercial sex was insane or unusual, had the purveyors only been female rather than male.
All the best,
Martin F
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Caroline Anne Morris
Inspector
Username: Caz

Post Number: 259
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 7:41 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Martin,

I wouldn't call it 'well aware of the ways' as such - I can only give examples from what my brother has told me over the years about what happened at his school, or rather what the gossip was among the boys themselves. Let's assume only the pupils knew about this particular master, because otherwise he would have been fired much nearer the start of his teaching career. If he had never lost it and whacked that boy, he would still have been giving his 'private' lessons if no member of staff had been any the wiser.

In Druitt's case, if the real reason for his dismissal had been anything other than sexual misconduct with his pupils, I imagine it might have been preferable to come clean about it, whatever it was, rather than hush it up and allow suspicions of something much more 'unspeakable' than worsening depression, theft or even putting a girl in the family way.

Love,

Caz
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Jon Smyth
Detective Sergeant
Username: Jon

Post Number: 78
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 7:41 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Martin.
In reading these exchanges I pick up on three different suggestions here. Please clarify what you perceive to be meant by 'sexually insane'.
1) masterbation.
2) homosexuality
3) "erotomania" (sex with prost.)
Or, are we to understand that you believe the Victorians lumped them all together under the same label. In other words, any deviance from legitimate socially acceptable matrimonial coupling was a form of insanity?.

thanks, Jon
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 134
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 8:29 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Jon,
I think that some Victorians thought none of them insane, others thought all of them insane, others yet might think any one or two of them insane. But assuming that we can agree that "promiscuous" normally means nothing more than "enjoying more sexual partners than I think proper", I don't personally believe any of them are marks of insanity, or, in the case of masturbation, will lead to insanity. I do, however, agree that public masturbation is sometimes a symptom of certain types of mental breakdown.
All the best,
Martin F
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Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100

Post Number: 87
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 9:00 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Caroline Anne Morris wrote:
In Druitt's case, if the real reason for his dismissal had been anything other than sexual misconduct with his pupils, I imagine it might have been preferable to come clean about it, whatever it was, rather than hush it up and allow suspicions of something much more 'unspeakable' than worsening depression, theft or even putting a girl in the family way.

I still don't understand how whatever it was can be said to have been "hushed up", as it was mentioned at the inquest.

We don't know whether further details were given in court, and not reported in the newspaper, or whether the coroner showed discretion by not pursuing the details. If the latter, we don't know whether it was his own choice, or in deference to the wishes of the family, or for that matter in deference to the wishes of Valentine.

Unfortunately I just don't think the reports of the inquest are full enough to tell us what the "serious trouble" was.

The interpretation of Macnaghten's phrase, "sexual insanity", could be another matter, though.

If that could really be shown to refer to homosexuality, it would obviously weaken the case against Druitt hugely, particularly if it came to Macnaghten from the family, and was the basis of their suspicions. (Alternatively, of course, Macnaghten may well have had access to a fuller account of the inquest than we have, in which the nature of the "serious trouble" could have been specified.)

Chris Phillips

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Chris Phillips
Detective Sergeant
Username: Cgp100

Post Number: 88
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 9:28 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I thought I'd posted this previously, but I can't find it.

The closest I've been able to find to the "sexual insanity" terminology in a contemporary or near-contemporary source is in Charles Arthur Mercier's "A Text-Book of Insanity and other Mental Diseases" (London, 1914). This includes a section on the "fifth type of acute insanity [which] is the sexual".

This is described as "cases in which the [sexual] proclivity becomes so pronounced, assumes such prominence, is by so much the most prominent and conspicuous feature, as to constitute a distinct type of the malady". It adds that this is exhibited almost exclusively by women, and is often called nymphomania.

That's why I'd like to see the full text of Wilde's petition (particularly whatever's omitted immediately after "sexual madness"), as it sounds rather like his "erotomania".

Chris Phillips

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Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris

Post Number: 372
Registered: 4-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 1:35 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Strictly speaking "erotomania" has a very specific meaning as a clinical condition.

"Erotomania, sometimes called de Clerambault's syndrome is a condition where a person believes (quite wrongly) that someone else, usually someone who is at a higher social or work level than themselves, is in love with them.
It is more common in Women.
It is classed under a group of Disorders known as the Delusional (Paranoid) Disorders"

"Erotomania can be defined as a psychological disorder in which the afflicted relentlessly pursues the notion that the object of his/her affection reciprocates his/her romantic feelings and/or fantasies. This obsession with the desired individual continues long after that individual has asserted that he/she is not interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with the afflicted. Consequently, erotomaniacs tend to stalk their victims. It has been postulated that those who stalk suffer from a basic fault in their capacity to have relationships with others. (Lipson et al., 1998)."

" Description

De Clerambault's syndrome was once regarded as a female disorder (with male victims), however, more recently it has been recognised in male patients. This type of stalker has real potential for violence when their "love" is persistently unrequited by the victim (referred to as the "love object").

The perpetrator may become aware of their victim through various forms of the media (cinema, TV, radio, newspapers, etc.) and establishes a delusional fantasy in which they have a special or unique relationship with the victim. These fantasies can be of an extreme sexual nature - sometimes reflected in the way the stalker attempts to communicate with the victim.

Patterns of behaviour

While communication is one-way, the stalker believes the victim is communicating with him or her - using a secret code that only they know the meaning of. Due to the nature of this type of stalker most victims will be the rich and famous. In some cases the victim may simply look like someone famous.

What makes this type of stalker dangerous is their tendency to objectify their victims. This means they will view a victim not as a human-being, but as an object that they alone must possess and control.

Why was the victim chosen?

The victim is usually chosen 'from a distance'. This means that the stalker learned of the victim through the media, or more recently, through the Internet (chat rooms) and not through direct contact or past relationships."

Hope these definitions are of use
Chris


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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 136
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 2:04 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Well, Wilde certainly never had De Clerambault's syndrome, and never imagined he had!
All the best,
Martin F
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Chris Scott
Inspector
Username: Chris

Post Number: 373
Registered: 4-2003
Posted on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 3:53 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Further to the above I have found this comment on the changing definitions of erotomania:
The diagnosis of erotomania was in desuetude in the twentieth century until it was officially recognized in 1987 by the American Psychiatric Association, which defined it as the delusion of being loved by another, usually of higher status. 4 Several psychiatrists have tried to legitimize the diagnosis by tracing its supposedly continuous history from Hippocratic cases to medieval amor insanus to Esquirol's nineteenth-century monomaniacs to Clérambault's Syndrome in the twentieth century. 5 In so doing, they often fail to note the dramatic changes in the characteristics of erotomania. 6 Most significantly, medieval love melancholy was a form of excessive, unrequited love for another, whereas contemporary erotomania is a delusion of being loved. Furthermore, nineteenth-century erotomania described manic patients, like Mlle. G ----, with "perverse" sexual sensations, obsessions, and compulsions but who confessed no particular amorous interests at all. In other words, a connotation of deviant sexuality (érotisme) was introduced into the diagnosis of erotomania in the nineteenth century and later withdrawn from it in the twentieth. The nineteenth-century incarnation of erotomania is therefore central to the contemporary notion of the erotic: something "which is associated with physical love, which is of a sensual nature, sexual," or artistic works "which can incite the search for physical pleasure." 7

From:
• The Erotic Imagination: French Histories of Perversity
Book by Vernon A. Rosario; Oxford University Press US, 1997
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 137
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 8:59 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Interesting. I remember an LMG (little mad girl) who haunted the senior common room of the University of the West Indies in Barbados for a few weeks in 1981. (She could get in through always-open glass sliders facing the Caribbean). She would probably have been delighted to accompany to bed any one who asked her - (no one did, as far as I know) - and nursed the delusion that President Nixon was in love with her.
All the best,
Martin F
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Jeffrey Bloomfied
Detective Sergeant
Username: Mayerling

Post Number: 110
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 1:55 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi all,

John Ruffels reminded me (by private e-mail) of
a comment I made some time back regarding Conan
Doyle and Oscar Wilde. The comment (I have to
transcribe it, I don't have the actual quote) was
in Doyle's MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES (1924), his
memoirs.

Basically, in January 1889 the London representative for Lippincotts (the U.S. magazine
and book publisher) invited Doyle and Wilde to
dinner. Doyle was invited to contribute a new
Sherlock Holmes novel, and Wilde asked if he could
write a novel. The literary results of these
invitations were THE SIGN OF FOUR and THE PICTURE
OF DORIAN GRAY. Doyle though was charmed by Wilde, who told him he enjoyed reading Doyle's last major novel, MICAH CLARK (1888). It is a
novel about Monmouth's Revolt against James II
in 1685 and the Glorious Revolution. Wilde was
fascinated by Doyle's handling of the character of
the notorious Judge George Jeffreys (of the "Bloody Assizes"). Doyle made Jeffreys into
a "fallen angel" type. It was just up Wilde's
alley.

Doyle went on to briefly discuss his friendly
relationship with Wilde, but explains that it
gradually disappated. Wilde was always friendly,
but Doyle found little to encourage greater
intimacy. He concludes the section by saying that
he believed that Wilde's fall in 1895 was due to
a type of insanity.

It has been many years since I read MEMORIES AND
ADVENTURES, so I encourage someone out there to
find the book, and published the section I am
referring to. I may add these personal observations.

Doyle may have been underplaying his friendship
with Wilde. Samuel Rosenberg's book, NAKED IS THE
BEST DISGUISE, discussed the undercurrents and
symbolism of the Holmes stories (and of some of
Doyle's other writings), and pointed out that
certain figures in the opening portion of THE SIGN
OF FOUR, the residence of Pondicherry Lodge, the
scene of the murder of Bartholemew Sholto, are
possibly gay. It is an all male establishment.
The brother of the dead man, Thaddeus Sholto,
loves "Eastern" luxuries, and seems to look at times like Wilde. Note the last name (Sholto) is
the family name of Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas -
Wilde's intimate. There is a discussion on paintings that Thaddeus Sholto has, including
a Bougerreau. Here, Rosenberg stretches a bit
farther, suggesting it an elusive word play for
"bugger - oh!" How much credence there is to
Rosenberg's interpretation remains with the reader.

However, I still maintain there may be something
to a friendlier relationship between Doyle and
Wilde than let on in 1924. It is due to the
date of the Doyle Memoirs, and Doyle's sense of
self-protection.

Wilde's reputation was still under a heavy cloud
in 1924. The residue of Victorianism was in
existance. Lord Alfred Douglas had repudiated his earlier lifestyle, and was now a reactionary.
In 1918 he had been in back of a major social
legal action (with a right wing Parliamentarian
named Noel Pemberton Billings)against dancer
Maud Allan, attacking her and most of the social
register for being perverts, or pro-German traitors. Allan (the sister of murderer William
Theodore Durrant, by the way) lost her libel suit. In 1922 Edith Thompson was convicted of
the murder of her husband by her lover, Frederick
Bywaters, by a jury directed by a Judge who hated
adultery. Edith was executed in a wretched manner, being in a state of total collapse. There is no evidence that she really planned the
murder of her husband. [By the way, the darling
Judge in this case, Mr. Justice Shearman, did not
apparently get asked if he felt it right for triple murder killers for profit to have legal
representation when they were guilty as hell -
Shearman was the junior to Sir Edward Marshall
Hall in defending George Joseph Smith, in 1915.]

Anyway, 1924 was still too stodgy a year to boast
of friendships with still-questionable figures
like Wilde. And Doyle had another reason to wish
to distance himself from Wilde. In 1924 he was
deeply involved in the spiritualist movement. His
sanity was being questioned in the press for his
adherence to that movement. Therefore, he was
likely to not want to give his critics ammunition
about his sanity by boasting of a deep friendship
with Wilde.

That is my take on it, anyway....

Best wishes,

Jeff
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 138
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 4:16 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Jeff!
Despite the lucubrations of scabrous scandal-seeking would-be critics reading things that aren't there between the lines of Sherlock Holmes stories, Doyle was without question robustly and gallantly heterosexual. He tended to blame himself when his first wife's TB passed to an incurable stage - (he wasn't a very good doctor) - and when he fell in love with another woman before her death, insisted that the relationship remain unconsummated and his wife (he hoped) know nothing of it as long as she lived, since he did not think her in any way at fault as a wife. This despite strong encouragement from his own family and in-laws to consummate his reciprocated love. After his short widowerhood he married extremely happily. Any serious and sensitive reading of the Holmes books shows that Holmes, too, is invariably chivalrous to women, even though Doyle tried to give him a certain machine-like sexlessness to emphasise his supposed brain-power. Watson, by contrast, is obviously gallant and susceptible.
Doyle's meeting with Wilde and Lippincott's agent at the Langham Hotel was the only meeting between the two men, and Wilde would undoubtedly have won Doyle's favour by praising Micah Clarke. For although Doyle was already having success with various forms of romantic and adventurous short stories, including ghost stories, before he invented Holmes and made detective fiction a major popular genre, it was always his hope that he would be recognized as a serious historical novelist. Remembe that Walter Scott's reputation meant that such writers were seen as classics, so that such dreadful writers as Charles Reade ("The Cloister and the Hearth") and R.D. Blackmore ("Lorna Doone") get shelved and catalogued as though though they belong alongside Mrs Gaskell or Thomas Hardy rather than Ouida or Mrs Braddon.)
Irritating as the Victorians' sexual naivety and stupidity can be, it is still more annoying when post-Freudian commentators seek to misplace hidden sexual abnormalities on men who were quite clear of them. I remember an outrageous television programme suggesting that Charles Kingsley regarded his own sexuality as a hidden interior monster he nicknamed Ernest, whereas Kingsley was actually exhilaratingly clear about the fact that his reciprocated sexual infatuation with his wife was one of the greatest God-given blessings he enjoyed. Of course he was more discreet about it than a later confessional generation might have wished.
It's true that the "chummeries" of active young men flung around the empire could lead to overheated friendships, especially where evangelicals who consciously wanted to suppress their own sexual needs were concerned. Baden-Powell's friendship with "Boy" is a case in point. But it doesn't mean that BP was secretly homosexual like Cecil Rhodes, or unhappily pederastically inclined like General Gordon.
Please let Doyle off the hook!
All the best,
Martin F
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Jeffrey Bloomfied
Detective Sergeant
Username: Mayerling

Post Number: 111
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Sunday, August 10, 2003 - 10:54 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Martin,

Considering how fond I am of most of the Doyle
material I have read (my take is he was one of
the top ten short story writers of the Victorian
and Edwardian period in Britain - his novels are
too padded, except for those dealing with Holmes
and Challenger), I wish to point out that I am not
labeling Sir Arthur a hidden gay man. Rosenberg,
for that matter, did not suggest that - he suggested that Doyle's sub-text showed his commentary on Wilde. To me it is rather that Doyle, for reasons concerning the reading public of 1924 and his anti-spiritualist critics of 1924, would find his boasting of a close friendship with Wilde troublesome at best, good ammunition against his spiritualist crusade at worst. I can sympathize with his position actually.

By the way, I only read THE CLOISTER AND THE
HEARTH by Reade, and LORNA DOONE by Blackmore.
I happened to like both novels, but never had
any desire to read any further of either writer.
Are you saying they are really bad writers?
I don't know of any other works by Blackmore,
but Reade wrote IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND
(somewhere George Orwell called it's attack on
the penal system "memorable"). Are you sure he's
not worth reading?

Reade is also the fellow who took up the cudgels
for the Staunton Brothers, after they were found
guilty of starving Harriet Staunton and her child
to death in Penge. As a result, their death sentences were reduced to prison sentences (one of
them died in prison). One might consider him
a meddler, as subsequent examination of the
evidence by Sir Bernard Spilsbury in the 1920s
showed Harriet had been starved to death. But
does that mean we should reject Reade's ability
as a novelist? How ironic, considering his last
name.

I don't think anyone would put two such writers
in the same classification as Mrs. Gaskell or
Thomas Hardy. I certainly wouldn't. On the other
hand, look at the reading public today. Aside from college courses how many members of the
public read WIVES AND DAUGHTERS or TESS OF THE
D'URBERVILLES on their own (forget SYLVIA'S LOVER
or TWO ON A TOWER). Most readers I know read
the latest Stephen King or other recent popular
novelist. I promise you I try to stick to the
classics, but aside from my spurt of reading
Victor Hugo novels or Kipling stories, or Stevenson tales, I have to admit reading mostly
history and biography recently - mostly about
Colonial and Federalist America. Which reminds
me, I have two Charles Brockden Brown novels in
my closet I haven't read (WIELAND was something
of a trial for me). I guess I don't have the
time.

[I remember that Lord Melbourne was once asked
what his idea of heaven was - he said it was living with three complete libraries instead of
one. Fine - in an afterlife Lord Melbourne would
have had eternity to spend reading three complete
libraries. At age 49 I don't think I can. And
it won't get any better - I am always buying new
books.]

Tired and sad,

All the best,

Jeff
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Martin Fido
Detective Sergeant
Username: Fido

Post Number: 139
Registered: 6-2003
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2003 - 7:14 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Jeff!
I apologize for thinking you were endorsing the writers who seriously suggest a homosexual undertext to the Holmes-Watson relationship, and also for trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs - I had no idea you were so well read in Victorian fiction.
I don't know of anything else that Blackmore wrote, and I certainly enjoyed Lorna Doone when I read it as a child, but was shocked to find what tosh it is when I read it again in adult life. (Though it does add spice to walking through that beautiful Somerset country and Oare church). I didn't read The Cloister and the Hearth until I was in my thirties, and was then shocked to find what an unstructured and shallow mess it is - especially as my pastors and masters when I was 8 or 9 had recommended it as a classic book that all should read. Reade's other novels are sensational and overwrought examinations of social problems. There is a somewhat dryasdust study of Dickens, Reade and Collins as sensation novelists, and the author sadly fails to recognize the inferiority of Reade, who could mislead the incautious seriously as to the real evils of Victorian prisons. (By the way, our very own Sir Robert Anderson was always very proud of having lodged with Reade when he first came to London).
I can confidently confirm that there was no close friendship between Wilde and Doyle - I've written coffee table books on both of them. I should also say that Doyle was a man of sterling moral courage, and I don't think fear of being mocked for his spiritualism would ever have hindered him from standing up for friends, however unpopular. I quite agree with you that his forte is the short story: I myself like the Brigadier Gerards better than the Sherlock Holmeses. Though The Valley of Fear is, I think, a masterpiece of detective plotting, with the supposed victim proving to be the perpetrator. (Cf Thor Bridge).
All the best,
Martin F
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Tommy Simpson
Unregistered guest
Posted on Monday, August 11, 2003 - 10:51 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I know this has nothing to do with JTR, but was the great British racehorse Brigadier Gerard beaten only once in his glittering career by Roberto named after Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard? Incidentally he won me a packet.

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