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Authors: Roger Austen
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two books have been used as evidence to show that Stoddard was a somewhat "precious" stylist who could write charmingly but who didn't have very much to say. In fact, he had a good deal to say about a subject very close to his heart: men loving other men. And in South-Sea Idyls and For the Pleasure of His Company he said it, although at the time everyone had to pretend that he hadn't. In general, however, most of Stoddard's books deserve to remain in the background as their chief value is usually more biographical than literary.
It was how he lived, rather than what he wrote, that makes Stoddard of some interest to us today. All through his life he wore "his heart on his sleeve," as he used to say, falling in love with one good-looking young man after another. Since he felt it was his God-given right to love and be loved in return, he was seldom secretive about these affairs. On the
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contrary, when he had found a new "Kid," as he called these young men, he couldn't wait to share this good news with anyone who was willing to listen. By the time Stoddard was in his sixties, a British lady with whom he had corresponded for thirty years wrote to exclaim: "What a long line of Kids you have! . . . They 'stretch out to the crack of doom'!" In speaking out so freely about the love that otherwise "Dared Not Speak Its Name," Stoddard may be regarded as a homosexual touchstone among the writers in nineteenth-century America. Whenever he thought he detected a certain telltale quality in the lives or works of his fellow authors, he didn't hesitate to tell them so in letters or in person. Of course, he wrote to Whitman Leaves of Grass was, after all, so obvious for one in the know. And with the same sort of sniffing intuition, he felt he detected something behind the facades of Rudyard Kipling, Bliss Carman, Yone Noguchi, Frank Millet, Jack London, and, yes, even of the Hoosier Poet himself, James Whitcomb Riley! An examination of Stoddard's life will be illuminating, then, simply on the basis of how he reacted to all of the famous and near-famous men he got to knowheterosexuals as well as homosexualsand how they, in turn, reacted to him.
Let the misconceptions of the past be brushed aside. Those who still want to believe that Stoddard was in love with Ina Coolbrith (or was it Ada Clare or Lotta Crabtree?) should read no further. Those who will be affronted at finding Stoddard in bed with someone of the same sex should return this book to the public library. However, those curious to know what it was like to be a homosexual in nineteenth-century America maywith both pleasure and profit, it is hopedread on.
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With what he must have later regarded as remarkable prescience, Charles Warren Stoddard struggled against coming into the world in Rochester, New York, during the early morning hours of 7 August 1843. "I was born," he wrote sixty years afterward, "much against my will." 1 The infant had no way of knowing, of course, that his proud old family was in decline. He was to be told about the seventeenth-century Stoddards who had gone through Harvard to become doctors and ministers. Even in 1843, his paternal grandfather was a wealthy physician practicing in nearby Pembroke, New York. But Charles's father, Samuel Burr Stoddard, was in comparison an uneducated ne'er-do-well. In 1837, he had married a Pembroke girl, Sarah Freeman; he had fathered children in 1838 and 1841; and at the time of Charles's birth he was struggling to succeed in the paper-manufacturing business he owned with his father-in-law. For a while the firm of Stoddard and Freeman seemed on the verge of prosperity. In the late 1840s, the partners boasted in an advertisement that they offered "the largest assortment of Paper to be found in any house west of New York or Boston." 2 But in 1851 the firm failed, and after filing for bankruptcy, Charles's father left Rochester in search of a new job for himself and a new home for his family.
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It was how he lived, rather than what he wrote, that makes Stoddard of some interest to us today. All through his life he wore "his heart on his sleeve," as he used to say, falling in love with one good-looking young man after another. Since he felt it was his God-given right to love and be loved in return, he was seldom secretive about these affairs. On the
Page xlv
contrary, when he had found a new "Kid," as he called these young men, he couldn't wait to share this good news with anyone who was willing to listen. By the time Stoddard was in his sixties, a British lady with whom he had corresponded for thirty years wrote to exclaim: "What a long line of Kids you have! . . . They 'stretch out to the crack of doom'!" In speaking out so freely about the love that otherwise "Dared Not Speak Its Name," Stoddard may be regarded as a homosexual touchstone among the writers in nineteenth-century America. Whenever he thought he detected a certain telltale quality in the lives or works of his fellow authors, he didn't hesitate to tell them so in letters or in person. Of course, he wrote to Whitman Leaves of Grass was, after all, so obvious for one in the know. And with the same sort of sniffing intuition, he felt he detected something behind the facades of Rudyard Kipling, Bliss Carman, Yone Noguchi, Frank Millet, Jack London, and, yes, even of the Hoosier Poet himself, James Whitcomb Riley! An examination of Stoddard's life will be illuminating, then, simply on the basis of how he reacted to all of the famous and near-famous men he got to knowheterosexuals as well as homosexualsand how they, in turn, reacted to him.
Let the misconceptions of the past be brushed aside. Those who still want to believe that Stoddard was in love with Ina Coolbrith (or was it Ada Clare or Lotta Crabtree?) should read no further. Those who will be affronted at finding Stoddard in bed with someone of the same sex should return this book to the public library. However, those curious to know what it was like to be a homosexual in nineteenth-century America maywith both pleasure and profit, it is hopedread on.
Page 3
1
With what he must have later regarded as remarkable prescience, Charles Warren Stoddard struggled against coming into the world in Rochester, New York, during the early morning hours of 7 August 1843. "I was born," he wrote sixty years afterward, "much against my will." 1 The infant had no way of knowing, of course, that his proud old family was in decline. He was to be told about the seventeenth-century Stoddards who had gone through Harvard to become doctors and ministers. Even in 1843, his paternal grandfather was a wealthy physician practicing in nearby Pembroke, New York. But Charles's father, Samuel Burr Stoddard, was in comparison an uneducated ne'er-do-well. In 1837, he had married a Pembroke girl, Sarah Freeman; he had fathered children in 1838 and 1841; and at the time of Charles's birth he was struggling to succeed in the paper-manufacturing business he owned with his father-in-law. For a while the firm of Stoddard and Freeman seemed on the verge of prosperity. In the late 1840s, the partners boasted in an advertisement that they offered "the largest assortment of Paper to be found in any house west of New York or Boston." 2 But in 1851 the firm failed, and after filing for bankruptcy, Charles's father left Rochester in search of a new job for himself and a new home for his family.
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