![]() ![]() Symonds and Ellis collected the personal testimony of more than 30 gay men (as well as at least six gay women), charting the apparent ease with which these men were managing, despite the obstacles, to live reasonably fulfilling lives. (There has never been a British law affecting lesbianism.) In 1892, the writers John Addington Symonds (gay but married for nearly three decades, with four daughters) and Havelock Ellis (straight but married to a lesbian) began collaborating on a book about homosexuality, titled Sexual Inversion, arguing that it was a harmless human “variation” and in the case of men should be legalised. Common sense tells us that this must be true – even if it means subduing our idea that to be gay in the 19th century was necessarily to exist in a private hell, or in prison, or both. Meetings such as this were constant occurrences in Victorian Britain. (The same was true in Wales it remained illegal in Scotland until 1980, Northern Ireland until 1982 and Ireland until 1993.) Carpenter and Merrill’s relationship was by its very nature extraordinary, but its origins were entirely ordinary: a meeting of eyes, a burst of conversation, the giving of names and addresses. Yet in that period, and until 1967, sexual activity between men was illegal in England. (Their partnership would inspire EM Forster’s novel Maurice, begun in 1913.) The “so forth” had to wait until Carpenter’s guests had departed, but it proved the beginning of a relationship that would last until Merrill’s death in 1928 – from 1898, they even lived in the same house. They found a way to speak, and Merrill urged Carpenter to “let the others go on, to return with him to Sheffield, and so forth”. There was a “look of recognition”, Carpenter wrote privately later.Īs he led his friends to his house, he realised that Merrill was following behind. The train steamed in among those disembarking was a handsome young man called George Merrill. ![]() In the spring of 1891, Edward Carpenter – former Anglican priest turned socialist campaigner, poet and sandal-maker – was awaiting the arrival of some friends at Dore and Totley station, outside Sheffield. ![]()
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