Against the Law

by Peter Wildeblood; Max Lerner

  I must begin by trying to show what this difference is. The whole question is so surrounded by ignorance, moral horror and misunderstanding that it is not easy to approach it with an open mind. I shall not try, at this stage, either to explain or to excuse it, but simply to describe my condition. Briefly, it is that I am attracted towards men, in the way in which most men are attracted towards women. I am aware that many people, luckier than myself, will read this statement with incredulity and perhaps with derision; but it is the simple truth. This peculiarity makes me a social misfit from the start; I know that it cannot ever be entirely accepted by the rest of the community, and I do not ask that it should. It is up to me to come to terms, first with my own condition, and secondly with other people whose lives quite rightly centre upon the relationship between a man and a woman.

  If it was possible for me to become like them I should do so; and nothing would be easier for me than to assume a superficial normality, get married and perhaps have a family. This would, however, be at best dishonest, because I should be running away from my own problem, and at worst it would be cruel, because I should run the risk of making two people unhappy instead of one.

  I think it is more honest, and less harmful, for a man with homosexual tendencies to recognise himself for what he is. He will always be lonely; he must accept that. He will never know the companionship that comes with marriage, or the joy of watching his children grow up, but he will at least have the austere consolations of self-knowledge and integrity. More than that he cannot have, because the law, in England, forbids it. A man who feels an attraction towards other men is a social misfit only; once he gives way to that attraction, he becomes a criminal.

  This is not the case in most other countries, where the behaviour of consenting adults in private is considered a matter for themselves alone. Britain and America are almost the only countries in which such behaviour constitutes an offence, and in America the law is reduced to absurdity by the fact that it applies officially, also, to a variety of acts between men and women, whether married or not; it has been estimated that a strict application of the law would result in the imprisonment of two-thirds of the adult population, and as a result it is seldom invoked, even against homosexuals.

  In Britain, however, the law is very much alive, and heavy penalties are incurred by anyone who breaks it. A homosexual who gives way to his impulses, even if he is doing no conceivable harm to anyone, therefore runs appalling risks. The fact that so many men do so shows that the law, however savage, is no deterrent. If, as people sometimes say, homosexuality is nothing but an affectation assumed by idle men who wish to be considered ‘different’, it is indeed strange that men should run the risk of life imprisonment in order to practise it.

  The truth is that an adult man who has chosen a homosexual way of life has done so because he knows that no other course is open to him. It is easy to preach chastity when you are not obliged to practise it yourself, and it must be remembered that, to a homosexual, there is nothing intrinsically shameful or sinful in his condition. Everywhere he goes, he sees other men like himself, forbidden by the law to give any physical expression to their desires. It is not surprising that he should seek a partner among them, so that together they may build a shelter against the hostile world. One of the charges often levelled against homosexuals is that they tend to form a compact and exclusive group. They can hardly be expected to do anything else, since they are legally excluded from the rest of the community.

  In spite of this, it is difficult to draw a distinct line between homosexuals and ‘normal’ or heterosexual men. Many men have had homosexual experiences of one kind or another in the course of their lives without becoming exclusively homosexual. Probably large numbers of people go through a stage of this kind during childhood or adolescence, but sooner or later they make the natural transition into normality. This may be part of the process of growing up. A baby is interested in nothing but itself; a small child directs its affection towards other people regardless of their sex; an adolescent boy begins to feel attracted exclusively towards girls; a grown man chooses a woman as his partner. That is the normal pattern. In some cases, however, the process is arrested or reversed. The man remains as the child was, failing to discriminate between the sexes; or he develops in the abnormal direction of being attracted only towards his own sex.

  Such desires can never, I believe, be wholly eradicated. They may perhaps be prevented from developing in the adolescent, if they are discovered soon enough, but it seems that little can be done for an adult who has these tendencies. I have consulted a great many psychiatrists and read dozens of books on the subject, without discovering much ground for hope. Doctors are, of course, always unwilling to admit defeat, but I have never yet found one who claimed to be able to turn a homosexual into a normal man. The most they can do, it seems, is to teach the ill-adjusted homosexual to accept his condition and make the best of a bad job; and this, of course, is directly contrary to the spirit of the law.

  The view of the law—and it is shared by many sincere men and women—is that homosexuality is a monstrous perversion deliberately chosen, and that the men who make that choice deserve to be punished for it. The very words of the law are impregnated with emotion on this subject; murder is merely murder, but homosexual acts are ‘the abominable crime’ and ‘gross indecency’. The upholders of the law will claim that homosexuality has always been a symptom of a nation’s decadence, forgetting that it is widespread and tolerated in such respectable and progressive places as Switzerland and Scandinavia. They will say that it is inseparable from effeminacy, ignoring the fact that it has been practised among the most warlike communities, from the Samurai of mediaeval Japan to the present-day Pathans of the Northwest Frontier, and that men like Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great and Lawrence of Arabia are known to have been homosexuals. They will argue that homosexuals are by nature vicious and depraved, because they cannot know that this minority group, branded by them as ‘immoral’, has an austere and strict morality of its own.

  I suppose that most people, if they were asked to define the crime of Oscar Wilde, would still imagine that he was an effeminate poseur who lusted after small boys, whereas in fact he was a married man with two children who was found guilty of homosexual acts committed in private with male prostitutes whom he certainly did not corrupt. The Prosecution never attempted to prove that he had done any harm by his actions. It is arguable, however, that an immense amount of harm has been done during the last sixty years by the Wilde legend. In every generation there have probably been hundreds of adolescents who have been first puzzled, and then unwholesomely fascinated by the aura of secrecy and sordid glamour which still surrounds the case. If Oscar Wilde had never been brought to trial, he would be remembered only as a minor poet and playwright; as it is, he has become a martyr.

  This is doubly unfortunate because, as I have said, Wilde is falsely invested in most people’s minds with the attributes of effeminacy and love of boys. The labels stick, even when we know that they do not tell the truth; and since Wilde is probably the best-known of all homosexuals, it is supposed that all of them share the tendencies which have, quite wrongly as it happens, been ascribed to him.

  There are, of course, men whose sexual feelings are directed towards boys, just as there are ‘normal’ men who are attracted towards small girls. I have talked to many of them in prison, and I am more convinced than ever that they form a quite separate group from men like myself. Although I regard them with just as much distaste as anyone else, I have tried very hard to understand their point of view, but we have no common ground for discussion. My preferences are as inexplicable to them as theirs are to me. I do not pretend to know what is to be done with men like this; they must obviously be prevented from giving way to their inclinations, because of the harm that they may do, but I am not sure that imprisonment provides the answer.

  It seems to me very important to discriminate between the pederast, or lover of boys, and the ho
mosexual, or lover of men. I am not convinced that a boy can be turned into a permanent homosexual by an isolated, early experience, but this risk must at all costs be avoided. Furthermore, it seems fundamentally immoral to me for a man to take advantage of his greater age and experience to seduce a child, whether a boy or girl. Sexual experiences of any kind play such an important part in a person’s development that they should not be allowed to take place until he or she is physically and mentally ready for them.

  Homosexuality between adults presents a very different moral problem. There are thousands of men in this condition, who are forbidden by the law to seek any sexual outlet, even with one another. To the homosexual, this seems unjust. He does not wish to seduce children, not only because it seems to him basically immoral to do so, but because he is not attracted towards them. He is unlikely to make advances to ‘normal’ adults, because he knows that such men, even if he finds them attractive, will not want to have anything to do with him. Even if it were possible, he would not wish to take a ‘normal’ man away from his wife and family and persuade him to take up a way of life which he would always regret. On the other hand, he cannot see why he should be condemned to perpetual continence, when there are so many other men like himself with whom it would be possible to enter into a relationship which would do no harm to anyone.

  That is the morality of the homosexual, and it is my own. It is not endorsed by the law of the country, as the best kind of relationship between a man and a woman is endorsed; in fact, as I shall show, the present state of the law actually goes far to discourage homosexual relationships of the more sincere and ‘moral’ kind. Nor is it much encouraged by the community: when all homosexual acts, whether between adult men or between men and boys, are treated by the law with equal severity, it is difficult for the general public to discriminate between them.

  There is another misconception which I should like to dispel. This concerns the appearance and manner of the homosexual. Everyone has seen the pathetically flamboyant pansy with the flapping wrists, the common butt of music-hall jokes and public-house stories. Most of us are not like that. We do our best to look like everyone else, and we usually succeed. That is why nobody realises how many of us there are. I know many hundreds of homosexuals and not more than half a dozen would be recognised by a stranger for what they are. If anything, they dress more soberly and behave more conventionally in public than the ‘normal’ men I know; they have to, if they are to avoid suspicion.

  When I ask for tolerance, it is for men like these. Not the corrupters of youth, not even the effeminate creatures who love to make an exhibition of themselves, although by doing so they probably do no harm; I am only concerned with the men who, in spite of the tragic disability which is theirs, try to lead their lives according to the principles which I have described. They cannot speak for themselves, but I shall try to speak for them. Although I have been to prison and most of them have not, it is they who are the captives of circumstance, not I.

  The Montagu Case, it will be remembered, was concerned with acts said to have been committed by five adults: Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, Edward McNally, John Reynolds and myself. The result of it was that three of us were sent to prison and the other two, as a reward for turning Queen’s Evidence against us, were allowed to go free.

  Much was made by the Prosecution of the difference in social status between the various people concerned in the case, and perhaps I should begin this account of my life with a description of my social background and of the childhood influences which made me what I became.

  I was born at Alassio on the Italian Riviera in 1923. My father was a retired engineer from the Indian Public Works Department, who was at that time secretary of a tennis club patronised by the English visitors to the resort. My mother was the daughter of a sheep-rancher in the Argentine. She was many years younger than him, and I have often wondered whether this was one of the factors which influenced my later development; but I would never think of blaming them for what happened to me. They gave me all their love when I was a child, and their unquestioning loyalty at the time when I needed it most; I do not think that any parents could do more.

  When I was three years old we came to live in London, and the family album shows a procession of cloche hats and silk-stockinged knees. There were going to be no more wars; the night-clubs were crowded and everyone danced the Charleston. The first songs I remember were ‘Ramona’, ‘Charmaine’, and ‘A Room with a View’, which was said to be a favourite of the Prince of Wales.

  The various nannies who held dominion over my nursery were always talking about the Prince of Wales. I hated them all. Once, while walking near the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, I noticed another small boy with bandaged knees. I turned to the current nannie and asked why this was so. She replied sternly that the boy had eaten too many sweets; so many that they had bred worms in his inside, which were now wriggling out through holes they had bored in his legs. It sounds ridiculous now, but this and similar remarks had the effect of putting me off most forms of food for many years; I refused to eat meat, screamed loudly at the sight of a fishmonger’s slab, and once fainted from sheer hunger in a lift at Marshall & Snelgrove’s. The doctor said I must be a ‘natural vegetarian.’ Of course I did not tell my parents that I was afraid of being devoured by worms, and my lack of appetite must have given them considerable anxiety. Even now, I do not care for sweets.

  There were all kinds of childish fears. Worst of all was my fear of the dark. I used to lie awake with a thumping heart, trying not to look at the shadows cast by the night-light on the walls. All the things that had upset and fascinated me during the daytime came crowding back into my imagination at those times. In the winter there was a tall, old-fashioned oil stove in my nursery, with a top pierced with little holes through which the light shone on to the ceiling. This pattern of light, so steady and comforting, became for me a symbol of Good, driving out the evil influence of the writhing shadows on the wall. On nights when the stove was not lit, I used to hide my head under the bedclothes and repeat, over and over again, the only prayer I knew: ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child, pity my simplicity, suffer me to come to Thee’—an incantation which seemed, even then, pitifully inadequate against the demons which were crouching in the corners.

  Far more comforting than Jesus were Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and a Kanga made of white stockingette, with a matching Roo in her pouch. These all shared my bed and watched over me, their boot-button eyes fixed in unwinking stares on all the corners of the nursery in case some nameless Thing should leap out of the shadows. Grownups may laugh, but thousands of children are probably taking the same precautions tonight.

  When I was about five I began to attend a kindergarten in Earl’s Court, where I made a few friends and discovered that there was one place in the world even more terrifying than my nursery. This was the Bolivian Embassy, where I went to my first party. Everything began well, with a stupendous tea which culminated in the presentation, to each child, of a wooden box of crystallised plums. In the delight and confusion provoked by this largesse I wandered away, clutching my box of plums, through a curtained doorway and down a dark corridor. At the end of this, in an illuminated niche, stood a carving of a woman’s head—presumably a Spanish madonna—gilded and painted, with pink lips and a crystal tear oozing from each closed eye. Convinced that the head was real and freshly severed, I uttered a shocked howl which brought all the servants running. I was not invited to the Embassy again.

  It was the ambition of all parents at this time—and mine were no exception—to send their children to a good school. This meant one which would give them certain clear social advantages in later life, teach them the gentlemanly sports and the rudiments of education, and, most important of all, give them the cachet of ‘leadership’ which most families above a certain level of income believed, in 1930, to be the birthright of their sons. This was mainly a question of speaking BBC English, cultiv
ating a quiet taste in dress, using the right knife and fork and avoiding, like the plague, any interest or accomplishment which might set one apart from all the other little boys who were being put through the same mill.

  It must be extremely difficult for parents, assisted only by flattering brochures and the advice of friends, to choose a preparatory school for their sons, and perhaps in the end it makes little difference which one they select. I was sent to school as a boarder at the age of seven and remained there until I moved on to a public school seven years later. It may have been no worse than many other schools, but its effect on me was deplorable. Incessant bullying induced in me a painful shyness which took years to overcome, and when I took refuge in friendship with other outcasts like myself we were publicly ridiculed by the masters, who used to observe that ‘Sops of a feather flock together’. Sops, of course, were boys incapable of bringing glory to the school on football-ground or cricket-pitch; the persecution only succeeded in drawing them closer together, until they formed a kind of secret society—a childish underworld tragically like that of sexual inverts.

  I suppose I must always have known that I was different from other children, but it took me years to find out in what way I differed. Even then I was attracted to my own sex, long before I knew what sex was about; but this seemed perfectly natural, since the only people who showed any kindness to me were the other boys who were also looked down upon by the rest. The masters frightened me. There were—as I found out much later—several homosexuals among them, but these were not the ones who did most harm. It was the aggressively virile type of teacher, always trying to mould the boys into his own tough pattern, who first made me feel that I was a failure and an outcast.

  All games were compulsory, but it was usually possible to get through them without too much derision, provided that one ran about a good deal without actually getting in the way of the experts. The exception was boxing. This took place in the evenings and was presided over by a master who selected the contestants himself. I might have made a fairly adequate boxer if my nose had not bled so easily, and I am sure it would have done my nine-year-old ego a great deal of good if I had been allowed to fight, and perhaps beat, one of the other boys who made my life so unpleasant. This, however, was not the master’s plan. It was his habit, with a kind of gloating relish, to arrange for those whom he considered ‘Sops’ to fight each other; so that I would find myself, covered in blood, lunging painfully at the only other boy in the school whom I really liked, while the master danced around yelling ‘Come on, no kitten-pats!’.