Henry Sidgwick- Eye of the Universe
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out as a serious scholarly effort to come to terms with his legacy.
. Crompton. Byron and Greek Love, pp. –.
. Ibid., p. . Crompton’s wonderful study does not make the particular connections to Sidgwick and Symonds that I have emphasized, though it does bring out the
significance of the Benthamite background in an absolutely unparalleled way.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
. Ibid., p. and p. .
. Symonds, Memoirs, pp. –. The Greek means “longed for by his friends.”
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
. Symonds, Memoirs, p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., pp. –.
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. Ibid., p. .
. Symonds, Sexual Inversion, p. . Again, the variations between the different editions are pieced together for the first time in Strange Audacious Life.
. Symonds, Memoirs, p. .
. Ibid., pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –. The Greek expressions mean “godless in the world” and “being,” respectively.
. Symonds, Memoirs, pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. The original letter is in the Symonds Papers, Special Collections, Bristol Uni-
versity Library.
. Ellis and Symonds, Sexual Inversion, pp. –. Again, the German edition adds some significant details: “he seeks strong fellows between and years of age
who have full members, are sexually potent and always below his social station,”
and every “part of the desired body appears to him to be equally worth caressing.”
. Though this is a little too tidy, and it is impossible to say just how many entanglements Symonds really had. He allowed that, especially with his friends Roden
Noel and Ronald Gower, he occasionally gave in to some very decadent goings
on. Roger Fry, who was profoundly influenced by Symonds, called him “the most
pornographic person” he had ever met, though not at all “nasty.”
. Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, p. .
. From his diary, reproduced in part in Symonds, Memoirs, pp. –. The Greek means “now longing for passion.” Norman Moor would go on to become a very
successful master at Clifton College.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. . The Greek is of course
“eros.”
. Ibid., p. .
. To be sure, Sidgwick had a remarkable number of close friends, and some of the
others may or may not have been sexually unorthodox. Cowell was in all likeli-
hood also Hellenic in his tastes, though the evidence about him is thin; the same
might be said of G. O. Trevelyan (see Chapter ). Other intriguing possibilities
include Edmund Henry Fisher, a fellow Apostle who tenderly nursed Sidgwick
during his undergraduate illness, and J. B. Payne, a younger Apostle who died
prematurely, in . Payne was an aspiring writer (and publisher of Swinburne)
who told Sidgwick “If you want anybody assassinated morally in the P.M.G. [Pall
Mall Gazette], no questions asked, I am your man.” (Sidgwick Papers, Wren
Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, Add.Ms.a...) Another is
A. J. Patterson, who eventually moved to Hungary and wrote about Hungarian
politics, who figures in the diary, and with whom Sidgwick would have a
lengthy correspondence (see Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Trinity College,
Cambridge University, Add.Ms.c.). However, Browning’s Memories of Sixty
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Years leaves little doubt about such figures as F. W. Cornish and Richard
Jebb.
. Annan, The Dons, pp. –. Browning contributed the entry on “Education” to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and his views resembled
Seeley’s.
. For the stock (though incomplete) treatment, see Ian Anstruther, Oscar Browning, A Biography (London: John Murray, ); but see also Jane Marcus, “Review of Oscar Browning, A Biography,” Victorian Studies (), pp. –, and David Gilmour, Curzow: Imperial Statesman (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
), pp. –.
. See the various remarks about him in Jeremy Potter’s Headmaster: The Life of John Percival, Radical Autocrat (London: Constable, ), e.g. p. . This book gives a vivid picture of the Clifton of Dakyns and Symonds, of which Percival
was the founding headmaster.
. Symonds, Memoirs, pp. –.
. This is from a fragment found in the box of Noel’s papers that formed
the basis for Desmond Heath’s Roden Noel: A Wide Angle (London: Edwin
Mellen, ) and is quoted from Heath’s “Roden Noel: A Legacy of Words”
< http://www.hull.ac.uk/lib/archives/paragon//noel.html > .
. Heath, “Roden Noel: A Legacy of Words.”
. Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, pp. –. Crompton notes that Shelley’s
“Discourse on the Manner of the Ancient Greeks Relative to the Subject of
Love” was not half as bold as either Bentham’s work or Symonds’s. Intriguingly,
Crompton also implies that John Stuart Mill must have known more about the
topic than he let on. Mill had in bitterly complained that Plato’s “boundless
reputation” was not matched by actual knowledge of his works, and he “tried to
compensate in some measure by providing partial translations of the Protagoras
and the Phaedrus.” Yet as Crompton noted, the taboo concerning Plato’s “forbidden side” was firmly in place: “Though the theme of homosexuality is woven into
the very warp and woof of the Phaedrus, Mill managed to excerpt the dialogue in such a way as to leave no hint of its presence. Nor did his introductory discussion
make any reference to what had been left out” (pp. –). Even George Grote
had been more forthcoming.
. Ellis and Symonds, Sexual Inversion, pp. –.
. This is a familiar charge, which was already taken as given in Strachey’s day. It was formally suggested in E. M. Young’s biography of Arthur Balfour, and it has been
personally confirmed to me by the Right Honorable Guy Strutt, a descendant of
Lord Rayleigh, who, with the current Lord Rayleigh, most generously allowed
me to tour Terling Place and to visit Sidgwick’s grave. See E. M. Young, Arthur
/>
James Balfour: The Happy Life of the Politician, Prime Minister, Statesman, and
Philosopher, – (London: G. Bell and Sons, ), p. : “Sidgwick was sexually impotent; no wonder that years later Nora remarked that she had had a
‘grey life,’ and that she liked winking because ‘it is the least tiring expression of emotion.’” Young’s work also contains some interesting remarks on the Apostolic
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outlook: “there was another side to the ‘apostolic’ outlook: if it was agreeably
undogmatic, it was also somewhat cool, with a suggestion of surtour point de
zèle, even of superiority to the common mass (though the latter was carefully concealed)” (pp. –).
. Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, p. .
. The diary, from the spring of , reads: “Walked with Cornish – cannot mingle
my mind with his to generate soul-knitting thoughts. Browning came up – He
might be the friend I seek si non aliuno – Is Cornish worthy of him?” (CWC)
. Again, there can be virtually no doubt that Eleanor and Arthur were responsible
for destroying or suppressing a great deal of compromising material. At any
rate, it is also instructive that when Symonds died, the only thing that Sidgwick
requested from his widow was a single book: “it is a little Horace. In he gave me a Virgil, and the Horace is a fellow to it – a little Parisian edition with a few delicate engravings.” Symonds Papers, Special Collections, Bristol University
Library. The fate of Symonds’s literary remains is discussed in Schultz et al.,
Strange Audacious Life.
. See his “Account of My Friendship with Henry Sidgwick,” Myers Papers, Wren
Library, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Myers .().
. Sidgwick Papers, Wren Library, Trinity College, University of Cambridge,
Add.Ms.c...+. I discovered this piece quite by accident, when combing
through the Sidgwick Papers, and to the best of my knowledge, it has never been
so much as noted by scholars writing on Sidgwick.
. Noel to Sidgwick, May , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Collections,
Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//, pp. –; this is the
letter in which Noel chides Sidgwick for his “esoteric pride,” characteristic of
the Apostles.
. The Greek expressions mean “understanding” and “faculty of speech,” respec-
tively.
. This comes through most clearly in his correspondence with Myers, some of
which was discussed in Chapter .
. The original letter continues: “Where do these lines come? The heart bereaved of why and how/Unknowing, knows but that before/It had, what e’en to memory
now/Returns no more, no more.” In a letter from November, he says that he “has
got over” his “little emotional difficulty.”
. Noel to Sidgwick, May , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Collections,
Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//, pp. –.
. Noel to Sidgwick, October , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Collec-
tions, Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//, pp. –.
. Though in his Diary, at least, Sidgwick had even wondered “is my intellect much worth cultivating & even if it is why should I not narrow it to England & social science?” (CWC)
. Noel to Sidgwick, April , , Noel Papers, Archives and Special Col-
lections, Brynmoor Jones Library, University of Hull, DNO//, p. –,
p. .
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. The Greek phrases mean “blacksmith, bald–pated and small” and “domestic
economy,” respectively. Again, the allusion appears to be to Plato’s Republic, Book VI, e., referring to someone unfitted to be a guardian.
. Just how far Sidgwick was from orthodoxy is also suggested by the way he refused to be “godfather” to one of his own nephews and to one of Dakyns’s sons. He
explained that he simply could not take the Apostle’s Creed into his mouth.
Intriguingly, however, Benson presided at his wedding service.
. Recall the rather more abstract discussions of this in Chapter – for example, in connection with Crisp’s dualism.
. Of course, Noel was an Apostle and Dakyns was not.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. The Greek means “evil natures.”
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Symonds, Memoirs, p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., pp. –.
. It is noteworthy that Gregory Vlastos, who admired Dover’s work, was also an
admirer of Symonds’s pathbreaking effort. See his insightful little piece “Sex
in Platonic Love,” in his Platonic Studies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, , ), p. . There is a variorum edition of “Problem” in Schultz
et al., Strange Audacious Life.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –.
. Ibid., p. . The translation of Zeller – urged on Symonds by Jowett – was
eventually taken over by Sarah Francis Alleyne, and after her by Evelyn Abbott;
it appeared in the s as Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy.
. This letter is reproduced in part in the Memoir, p. .
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –.
. Ibid., pp. –.
. Ibid., pp. –. The Greek expressions respectively mean “best for me,”
“simply, absolutely” (repeated in reverse order in the last line), and “for country.”
. Ibid., p. . Perhaps a jab at Sidgwick? As Schueller and Peters note, “Symonds found an important precedent for the poetic treatment of exotic matter in Byron’s
narrative works.” “Erotic” matter would be more to the point.
. Ibid., p. .
. Phyllis Grosskurth, The Woeful Victorian: A Biography of John Addington Symonds (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ), pp. –.
. Ibid., p. .
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
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. Symonds, Memoirs, pp. –. The Greek means “most fair, untamed and
deceitful.”
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid., p. . Grosskurth’s edition of Symonds’s Memoirs does get this interaction right, correcting the mistaken claim, by Schueller and Peters, that this letter was
addressed to Henry.
. Ibid., p. .
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
. Ibid., p. . The Greek expression means “dull man’s book.”
. Ibid., p. .
. Ibid.
. Which was apparently swallowing the periodical publication of the various essays that eventually went into such books as Studies and Sketches in Italy and Greece (). It is interesting that the list of initials includes reference to W.C.S. – surely William Carr Sidgwick, the oldest Sidgwick brother, who also had a reputation
for “Sidgwickedness.” Reference is also made to J. R. Mozley, another important
old friend of Sidgwick’s, from the Grote Club.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –.
. I am most grateful to Desmond Heath for generously gifting this letter to me. To the best of my knowledge, it has never before been published or cited.
. The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , pp. –.
. Symonds, “Dantesque and Platonic,” in his In the Key of Blue (London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, ), pp. –.
. For a precise account of Symonds’s homoerotic poetic productions, see Ian Ven-
ables, “Symonds’s Peccant Poetry,” in Pemble, ed., John Addington Symonds:
Culture and the Demon Desire, Appendix.
. See Schultz et al., Strange Audacious Life, which transcribes various poems from the original peccant pamphlets.
. Quoted in The Letters of John Addington Symonds, vol. , p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. On the Symonds–Whitman relationship, see, in addition to the recent biographies
of Whitman, Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men before Homo-