GLR March-April 2023

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March-April 2023

The Age of Innocence

L AURENCE S ENELICK Jean Lorrain, Fin de Siècle Celebrity E MILY L. Q UINT F REEMAN Joining the Rosa Bonheur Revival A NDREW H OLLERAN The Inscrutable John Singer Sargent

W ILLIAM B ENEMANN The Sublime Sewer Club J IM V AN B USKIRK Straightwashing an Impressionist E DUARDO A. F EBLES A Renegade in the Paris Salon

Tom Crewe: Novelist with A New Life EDMUNDWHITE ELLENWALKER KennethWilliams Did Carry On

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The Gay & Lesbian Review March–April 2023 • VOLUME XXX, NUMBER 2 WORLDWIDE

Editor-in-Chief and Founder R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review ® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118

C ONTENTS

The Age of Innocence

F EATURES

Literary Editor M ARTHA E. S TONE Poetry Editor D AVID B ERGMAN Associate Editors S AM D APANAS P AUL F ALLON J EREMY F OX M ICHAEL S CHWARTZ Contributing Writers R OSEMARY B OOTH D ANIEL A. B URR C OLIN C ARMAN A LFRED C ORN A LLEN E LLENZWEIG C HRIS F REEMAN P HILIP G AMBONE M ATTHEW H AYS A NDREW H OLLERAN I RENE J AVORS J OHN R. K ILLACKY C ASSANDRA L ANGER A NDREW L EAR D AVID M ASELLO

Jean Lorrain, Ambassador from Sodom 10 L AURENCE S ENELICK

Meet the bawdiest fin-de-siècle poet and performer of them all

The Inscrutable John Singer Sargent 13 A NDREW H OLLERAN

All those paintings of male nudes—but who were these models?

Joining the Rosa Bonheur Revival 17 E MILY L. Q UINT F REEMAN

The cross-dressing 19th-century painter is having a moment

Gustave Courtois in the Paris Salon 20 E DUARDO A. F EBLES

His painting of wrestler Maurice Deriaz, shirtless, caused a stir

The Sublime Sewer Club 23 W ILLIAM B ENEMANN

Buildings for bachelors were a hot trend in late 19th-c. New York

Straightwashing Gustave Caillebotte 26 J IM V AN B USKIRK

The Impressionist’s homoerotic imagery is still being disregarded

R EVIEWS

P OEMS & D EPARTMENTS C ORRESPONDENCE 5 I N M EMORIAM — Don Gorton, Boston Activist and G&LR Mainstay 6 R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . BTW 8 R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . A RT M EMO — The Warren Cup and Me 16 D AVID G AULD P OEM — “in the eaton centre men’s room” 24 G WEN A UBE P OEM — “At the End of Christopher Street” 30 E MANUEL X AVIER A RT M EMO — The Darkness of Narrow Rooms 33 M ICHAEL S CHWARTZ P OEM — “If I Knew How To Do It” 43 J ONATHAN B RACKER C ULTURAL C ALENDAR 45 A RT M EMO — Kenneth Williams Never Stopped Carrying On 47 E LLEN W ALKER Tom Crewe — The New Life 29 E DMUND W HITE Seán Hewitt — All Down Darkness Wide 31 P HILIP G AMBONE Mairead Sullivan — Lesbian Death 32 M ARTHA K. D AVIS Taylor Brorby — Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land 34 D ALE B OYER Rachel Federman, editor — Writing a Chrysanthemum 35 M ICHAEL Q UINN Lars Horn — Voice of the Fish: A Lyric Essay 36 T HOMAS K EITH Simon Doonan — Transformer 37 H ANK T ROUT Michael Alenyikov — Sorrow’s Drive: A Quartet 38 L AURA A RGIRI Margaret K. Nelson — Keeping Family Secrets 39 J EAN R OBERTA Ernesto Mestre-Reed — Sacrificio 40 R EGINALD H ARRIS Edafe Okporo — Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto 41 A NNE C HARLES Raquel Gutiérrez — Brown Neon: Essays 42 R UTH J OFFRE Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan — Mad Honey 42 T ERRI S CHLICHENMEYER Gerard Cabrera — Homo Novus 43 W ILLIAM B URTON B RIEFS 44 Phelim McDermott, director — The Hours (opera) 46 A NDREW L EAR The First Homosexuals (art exhibition) 48 I GNACIO D ARNAUDE My Policeman and Spoiler Alert (two films) 50 C OLIN C ARMAN

F ELICE P ICANO J AMES P OLCHIN J EAN R OBERTA V ERNON R OSARIO Contributing Artist C HARLES H EFLING Publisher S TEPHEN H EMRICK Webmaster B OSTON W EB G ROUP Web Editor A LLISON A RMIJO ____________________________________ Board of Directors A RT C OHEN ( CHAIR ) E DUARDO F EBLES R OBERT H ARDMAN D AVID L A F ONTAINE J IM J ACOBS A NDREW L EAR R ICHARD S CHNEIDER , J R . ( PRESIDENT ) M ARTHA E. S TONE T HOMAS Y OUNGREN ( TREASURER ) S TEWART C LIFFORD (C HAIR EMER .) W ARREN G OLDFARB ( SR . ADVISOR EMER .)

The Gay & Lesbian Review/ WORLDWIDE ® (formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscriptions: Call 847-504-8893. Rates : U.S.: $41.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $51.70(US). All other countries: $61.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2023 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. W EBSITE : www.GLReview.org • S UBSCRIPTIONS : 847-504-8893 • A DVERTISING : 617-421-0082 • S UBMISSIONS : Editor@GLReview.org

March–April 2023

3

Springtime: “The Age of Innocence” FROM THE EDITOR

B Y “The Age of Innocence” I have in mind the cultural period just before the medicalization of homosexuality in the early 20th century, when it was still possible to en gage in same-sex erotic activity without being labeled an “in vert.” In what may be a first, all six features are related to this theme, and together they offer a mosaic of lives in these times. Not by design, but not entirely by accident, the articles dis play a strong bias toward France. The fact that both of the names by which this era is known—the fin de siècle and the Belle Époque—are in French speaks to the centrality of Paris as the hub of high culture, especially in the visual arts, through these decades. Three of the six featured subjects were in fact French painters of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. Rosa Bonheur, who started painting in the1850s, was one of the last in the great realist tradition that had ruled Europe for centuries, a style that she brought to its highest expression with her photorealist depictions of animals in the wild. As Emily L. Quint Freeman points out, the fact that she made it as a woman is impressive, and she did it by refusing to accept that role and assuming both the manners and privileges of a man. But Bon heur was soon eclipsed by the Impressionists, one of whom was the artist Gustave Caillebotte. Jim Van Buskirk argues here that denying the underlying—sometimes explicit—homoeroticism in his work has been a cottage industry for the past century. An other French painter, Gustave Courtois, worked into the 20th

century and brought a homoerotic vibe into the open in paintings of Maurice Deriaz, a wrestler who was a minor celebrity at this time. In doing so, as Eduardo Febles writes, he created a new kind of sensation in the art world that Andy Warhol would bring to fruition decades later. Another manifestation of the new celebrity culture was the writer Jean Lorrain, whose life and work are encapsulated here by Laurence Senelick. Lorrain was a decadent poet in Paris who was also a gossip journalist and a flamboyant figure about town, attending artists’ gatherings in painted face, dyed hair, and out rageous costumes. His gay poetry was explicitly sexual in a way that went beyond anything the visual artists could portray. An artist who pushed the visual envelope was American painter John Singer Sargent, who produced many paintings and drawings of male nudes, none of them for public display. As An drew Holleran elaborates, Sargent was clearly obsessed with men and formed close bonds with his models; but who were these men to him? Elsewhere inAmerica—in NewYork City, to be exact—a curious social trend was afoot: the construction of bachelor-only apartment buildings. William Benemann explains that buildings such as The Benedick in Washington Square at tracted an all-male clientele that didn’t object to sharing bath rooms or to the absence of women. If walls could talk, one can only imagine the stories The Benedick’s would tell. R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R .

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The G & LR

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Correspondence

shadows of the monumental spires behind you. A scenic destination pose or a metaphorical effect? Leon White, Seattle, WA Reply from the Editor: I was initially alarmed by Mr. White’s suggestion that perhaps the backdrop was only a computer-generated effect. Rest as sured, Stephen and I really did travel to the American Southwest last summer, and a passing stranger was kind enough to snap that photo with Balanced Rock (Arches National Park) in the background. That being clarified, Mr. White has since informed me that he wasn’t doubting the veracity of the shot but instead commenting on the phallic object in the background. In my defense, let me point out that there are other formations in the park that look even more like giant todgers (a word we have just learned from Prince Harry)—so much so that I’m surprised the religious Right hasn’t tried to have them banned. Richard Schneider Jr., Boston, MA Someone Else to Remember To the Editor: I always appreciate your annual tribute to the important LGBT figures who died in the past year [Jan.-Feb. 2023 issue]. One con spicuous omission this time was writer Doris Grumbach—possibly because she lived such a long life (1918–2022) that peo ple have forgotten her. Doris was a prolific novelist and memoirist who published over a dozen books, including groundbreaking works that dealt with lesbian themes in the 1950s and ’60s. She was also a personal friend, and I hope to write about her life and work at greater length later this year. Margaret Cruikshank, Scarborough, ME E DITOR ’ S N OTE : Ms. Grumbach died on Nov. 4th, days after our Nov. 1st cutoff. She will be included in next year’s obit roundup.

The Back Story to Queen Christina To the Editor: May I offer an interesting addendum to Irene Javors’ article, “How Garbo Compli cated Queen Christina ,” in the September October 2022 issue? According to my mother, Paramount screenwriter Anne Froelick, it was Salka Viertel’s screenplay and Garbo that complicated the 1933 movie Queen Christina . Garbo and Viertel were lovers at the time and must have had fun with the full-lip kiss between Queen Christina and Countess Ebba (played by Elizabeth Young) that occurs in the film. In the late 1940s, every Sunday my mother attended Salka Viertel’s famous Santa Monica soirées for notable European Jewish émigrés in Hollywood. She received special attention from her hostess because of her physical beauty and glamor, her intelli gence, and her left-wing politics. Since Mom was married to Dad and parenting me, she declined same-sex intimacy. However, due to their mutual passion for the American Com munist Party, Salka and Anne would stay in touch for the rest of their lives. In 1951, Viertel was put on an FBI “Watch List” and fled Hollywood to live in Klosters, Switzerland. That same year, my mother was “named” and then blacklisted. Twenty years later, my theatrical self visited eighty-year-old Salka in Klosters. I audi tioned with a Shakespeare monologue in her living room. She assured me I could be an actress “if I wanted it enough.” Frolic Taylor, Crowheart, WY The Background Was Real, and Spectacular To the Editor: In the January-February [2023] issue, it was nice to put faces with your names, Richard Schneider and Stephen Hemrick, with the photo of you both at Arches Na tional Park. After looking at your faces, I was drawn to what could have been your Gay Europe 2023 P LACES AND D ATES : Berlin & Munich Sept. 10th–19th

The Other APA To the Editor:

Just a short notice of a slight error way back in the May-June 2022 issue. In your “From the Editor” column (page 4), when referring to Malcolm Lazin’s article on the 1970s declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, you cite the “American Psychological Association.” Actually, it was the “other” APA—the American Psychiatric Association—that made the decision to de clare us sane. (The article itself does not contain this error.) Gerald Jones, Sun City, CA Where the Surname Comes First To the Editor: The article on Magnus Hirschfeld [Sept.- Oct. 2022 issue] was a great read. How ever, I was jolted toward the end when Li Shui Tong came up, and then subsequent mentions of him referred to him as Tong rather than Li. That would be like referring to the current president of China as Jinping rather than Xi, or to Chairman Zedong rather than Mao. Daniel Lowen, New York, NY Corrections In the Jan.-Feb. 2023 issue, in a review of Lonneke Geerlings’ I Lay This Body Down , the author’s gender was given correctly (as “she”) throughout the piece, until the final paragraph, where an editorial intervention introduced the error. In the Jan.-Feb. 2023 issue, in a review of Michael Snyder’s biography of James Purdy, the novelist’s 1964 work Cabot Wright Begins contains a misspelling (“Write” is wrong). In the Sept.-Oct. 2022 issue, in Colin Car man’s review of the film Fire Island , Alice Munro’s name was misspelled (as Monroe).

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IN MEMORIAM

Don Gorton,Boston Activist and G&LR Mainstay R ICHARD S CHNEIDER J R . D ON ELDRIDGE GORTON III (1960–2022) was a longtime activist for LGBT causes in Massachusetts who was also an integral part of this magazine for many

fore Stonewall. His historical research was all about locating the origins of modern laws against homosexuality, and that brought him to the court of Henry VIII in two lengthy articles that we remember fondly 25 years later. The first was titled simply “The Origins of Anti-Sodomy Laws,” and the search led straight to the Antibuggery Law of 1534. Henry had just broken with the Roman Church and was looking for any pretext to undermine its authority, harass its clergy, and confiscate its property. That the Catholic monaster ies were hotbeds of sodomy was apparently common knowl edge at the time, so by making it illegal—and punishable by death—he now had a pretext to round up the clergymen and send them to their doom. So he emptied the monasteries and confiscated their property; thus it was basically a land grab. Nevertheless, the 1634 law stayed on the books for centuries, taking various forms, as Don showed in a subsequent essay ti tled “Oscar Wilde Died for Henry VIII’s Sins.” After a five-year hiatus, Don returned to write more directly about LGBT politics, bringing a unique perspective in the con text of our mostly lefty writers. When I first met Don (circa 1990), he was a tax judge appointed by Republican governor WilliamWeld, whom Don had supported as a candidate. I don’t know at what point he stopped calling himself a Republican, but his disenchantment with the Party, and his steady move to the left, was documented in his articles. In one titled “The Gay Republican Conundrum,” he took on the Log Cabin Club and concluded that their Party’s relentless opposition to LGBT rights made their position untenable. In another, he offered a sober analysis of why Mitt Romney lost the Republican nomi nation in 2008. It’s interesting to note that it was still possible back then to have a calm discussion about the Republican Party, i.e., to regard it as other than a clown car or a crypto-fascist movement. In any case, by the 2010s, Don had become a leader in a notably lefty group called Join the Impact. (I joined him on a few of their outings.) Later, Don wrote quite a few op-ed pieces and shorter fea tures on issues of the day—bullying, the “It Gets Better” cam paign, marriage equality—plus a number of book reviews. Then there were the articles on off-beat topics of the kind that editors crave. Take a piece titled “The Lure of the Muscular Man” (2015) in which he argued that the appearance of physical strength and fitness (rather than actual success in hunting or battle) has been favored by natural selection—or really sexual selection—as an element in human evolution. And a piece in 2005 titled “A Literature of Hope for GLBT Youth” offered a remarkably detailed survey of novels in this new genre for young adults, and their role in the coming-out process. His final contribution was in 2017. After that, I would on occasion invite him to write an op-ed, and he’d reply that he had writer’s block, which sounded like a temporary condition, so I always assumed he would be back one day with fresh in sights, research, and provocations for our readers. Alas, this was not to be, but I’m grateful for Don’s many contributions and for the permanent record we have of his passion and creativity in the service of LGBT justice and equality.

years. Born in Mississippi, he took a law degree at Harvard in 1985 and began his career as an activist soon thereafter. Among his many positions of leadership in LGBT organizations, he was co-chair of the Governor’s Task Force on Hate Crimes from 1991 to 2003, where he spearheaded the successful campaign to pass a comprehensive hate crimes bill in the Commonwealth. Don’s involvement with what was then The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review began in the late ’90s and was multifaceted. He took the lead in reconstituting us as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) or ganization, which was transformative for the magazine. He also joined our Board of Directors, where he remained as our Clerk until his death on Christmas Eve, 2022. And he began to write for The Review —features, book reviews, op-ed pieces—and did so for the next twenty years. In the end Don wrote 25 articles on a strikingly wide array of topics, from history and literature to politics and pop culture. I suspect there was always a “political” dimension, even when it was a deep historical dive or literary analysis. Thus, for ex ample, a piece on E. M. Forster’s Maurice argued that its author was a visionary who anticipated gay liberation sixty years be

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The G & LR

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BTW

Not In Your Hand Seems it’s been a while since the religious Right went into full freakout mode over a logo or ad campaign, but they pretty much lost their minds over a change in those multi-colored and commercially personified candies known as M&M’s. At issue is Mars Inc.’s introduction of a new mix of colors, and thus characters, in some of its packaging. The new line includes only the three female characters (green, brown, and

purple), two of whom are hold ing hands and appear to be more than just friends. There’s even a slogan under the inverted car toon: “Supporting women flip ping the status quo.” Okay, so the morality police are upset about the lesbian pair; we get that. What’s amazing is the way they piled on with invective di

rected not at Mars Inc. but at the people being represented in the image. Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro asked: “Women, do you feel represented now ... on the M&M package that you’re guzz ling down, lonely in your apartment with your wine and your cats? How’s that going for you?” Tucker Carlson outdid his usual virulence, singling out the “plus-size, obese purple M&M” for special ridicule. Um, Tuck, the last time we checked, all of the M&M’s were equally round. Shifting Fulcrum In its eternal quest to find a conservative columnist to balance its lineup, The New York Times has hired an attorney named David French, who drew immediate fire from the LGBT community. French has close ties to a group called Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), whose entire raison d’être is opposition to LGBT civil rights. As senior counsel for ADF, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a hate group, French is big on defending people who’ve been taken to task for promoting anti-gay propaganda in places like class rooms and psychotherapy sessions. He’s a defender of “conver sion therapy” and wants to ban what he calls “transgenderism.” Anyway, having watched both David Brooks and Ross Douthat abandon Trump and drift slowly to the left—at least relative to the Republican Party— The Times may just have found the guy who can satisfy conservatives’ demand for “balance” at a time when the fulcrum has shifted decidedly to the right. The fact that French has earned his extremist bona fides entirely through his opposition to LGBT rights does give one pause; the biblically in clined might be reminded of the sacrificial lamb. Swearing by Superman There’s a new gay congressman in town (Washington, DC, that is), and he’s already distinguished himself in another way by being sworn in, not on a Bible, but on a comic book! There were actually three items under hand when Robert Garcia took the oath of office: an original Super man #1 comic from 1939, a photo of his parents, and a copy of his citizenship certificate. Garcia stressed the importance of

The G & LR

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these items, noting that both parents died of Covid in 2020 and describing his travails after leaving Peru at age five and grow ing up in Southern California. Suffice it to say, his vintage comic collection is something he takes very seriously. How all this intersects with being gay is unclear, though some people will undoubtedly try to make something of it. In rejecting the Bible, Garcia was passing on the book that’s been the justifi cation for so much anti-gay hatred. And the choice of a comic book to replace it—the substitution of low culture for high— is pretty much the definition of Camp. Breaking News The story accretes from day to day, so any thing we say about Congressman (for now) George Santos will seem quaint by the time you read this. At this writing we’re learning that he once had a drag act in Brazil, a story he’s denied (kind of), but there are photos to prove that “Kitara Ravache” ex isted. And while pageant queens are expected to assume a fake name, Santos would go on to invent many identities with which to defraud customers, employers, or voters. What’s remarkable is the sheer number of scams and deceits that he devised and juggled. (How did he keep track?) One searches for an organiz ing principle that unites his claims of descending from Holo caust survivors, being a volleyball star at Baruch College, working for Goldman Sachs, employing four people who died in the Pulse Nightclub massacre, and on and on. Doubtless crimes were committed, but so much of what Santos claimed seem like the tall tales of a bullshit artist. Blog gers have joined the parlor game of diagnosing his personality disorder, and clearly he has one, but it’s also possible to see him as a creature of social media culture gone mad. The various aliases all started out as avatars to which he attributed fabulous deeds and ancestry. His mistake was running for political of fice—something that could also be said for Donald Trump or anyone who has a lot of skeletons. You can create all the trolls and profiles that you want on-line, but eventually you may have to make an appearance IRL, as when you run for public office. If there’s a psychological disorder at work, it may be that—like some unknown percentage of today’s TikTok celebs—Santos came to believe that identities in the real world could be created and managed as easily as those in the virtual one. Alas, we only have one physical body to work with. Alternatives to The Pill A woman claiming that she became a lesbian after she stopped taking birth control pills became a TikTok sensation when her story struck a chord for many women. This is big news if her case is typical, as it would mean that one side effect of the pill is heterosexuality! The report set off a conversation about the hormonal changes caused by the pill and whether they could alter one’s sexual orientation. Var ious theories came into play: the effect of returning to natural levels of progesterone and estrogen; a change in pheromone response to male and female scents; certain changes in “men tal health.” They all sound plausible enough, but is it not pos sible (one’s inner economist is asking) that going off the pill, by putting pregnancy back on the table, simply alters the cal culus of sex with men for some women? This effect could still be the work of hormones, which could apply some ancient brakes on the lure of procreative sex, an epigenetic switch that causes one to look at other women in a whole new way. March–April 2023

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ESSAY

Jean Lorrain, Ambassador from Sodom L AURENCE S ENELICK

O F ALL THE DECADENTS, dandies, and de viants who enlivened the fin de siècle in France, none was more outrageous than Jean Lorrain (1855–1906). He serves as an early example of the homosexual celebrity as social and artistic arbiter, a role later played to the hilt by Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. His aphorism “What is a vice? A taste one does not share” belongs in every diction ary of quotations. That it doesn’t may be testimony to the sul furous reputation that lingered long after his disappearance from the scene (Figure 1). Paul Alexandre Martin Duval, son of a wealthy Normandy ship owner, arrived in Paris in 1881 and set out to make that reputation. When he first began publishing his work, his father insisted that he use a pseudonym, and his doting mother found “Jean Lorrain” in a local directory. His earliest collection of poems, Le sang des dieux ( Blood of the Gods, 1882), daringly featured the ephebes of classical mythology: Ganymede, Anti nous, “Hylas, his arms polished by Hercules’ kisses,” and the Roman mime Bathyllus scorching sailors in low dives with his come-hither glances and provocative dances. The book met with modest sales but major publicity. With their emphasis on succulent adolescents, the poems fail to reflect Lorrain’s own weakness for what he called Fleurs de boue ( Flowers of Mud, an allusion to Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil ), “those gentlemen of the ring, a tiger pelt/ About their loins, bare chests, their own hides fine and clear” ( Modernités, 1885). “I am very fond of hooligans, fairground wrestlers, butcher boys and assorted pimps, both plain and fancy,” he boasted. In a fashionable restaurant he declaimed to the aston ished diners: “Last night I lay between two stevedores/ Who emptied me of all my passion.” Sex with thugs and ruffians is a recurring theme in his stories. In Sonyeuse (1891), a woman prefers to couple with the basest criminals in the hope of some day attending their executions (Figure 2). Of strapping physique himself, with the blond moustache of a Viking and a deep bass voice, Lorrain painted his face, dyed his hair garish colors, rimmed his heavy-lidded, bulging eyes with kohl, and adorned his fluttering hands with ornate rings. He attended artists’ balls in outrageous costumes, often escorted by a prize-fighter in tights. “As unctuous as a frosted pastry,” Lor rain became known, in the words of Philippe Jullian, as “the Petronius of the decadence ... the best observer of a milieu of which he was also the worst ornament” (Figure 3). Lorrain haunted galleries and theaters for material to write about, puffing a painter or scorning a star in sensational articles Laurence Senelick is author of Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture (2017) and the editor-translator of Lovesick: Mod ernist Plays of Same-Sex Love, 1894–1925 (1999).

signed with pseudonyms from “Mimosa” to “Stendhaletta.” He soon won infamy as a journalist whose columns were savored for their colorful reportage, innuendo-saturated gossip, and character assassination. They would flay his best friends and apologize profusely afterwards. Nor had he any compunction about mocking others’ sexual penchants, calling Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen “a petty suburban Nero” whose taste for Black Masses and altar boys “is better suited to the pink mass (Vaseline and essence of Guerlain).” In Le Figaro , in 1896, Lorrain venomously characterized the budding Marcel Proust as one of those “pretty little young men in society down with a bad case of literature.” Proust’s Pleasures and Days is described as a blend of “elegiac flabbi ness, elegant and subtle little nothings, pointless tenderness, inane flirtations in a precious and pretentious style.” This was the chamber pot calling the slop bucket smelly. It led to a harm less duel, after which the two ignored one another thoroughly (Figure 4). There is, however, more than a hint of Lorrain in

The G & LR Fig. 1. Front cover of Lorrain’s first biography by his disciple Georges Normandy and his admirer Mme Aurel. It shows him in his South-of-France outfit and an em blem combining two of his favorite tropes, a poisonous snake and precious stones.

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L to R: Fig. 2. Temptation . Caricature by Moliss and A.R. Caption reads: “The Indiscreet: ‘Why tempt me? You want to turn me into a man like any other?’” Fig. 3. Caricature by Bac. Feb. 1897. Fig. 4. Caricature of Sem, a friend of Lorrain.

Proust’s Baron de Charlus. As a writer of fiction, Lorrain spanned the fin de siècle spec trum, from Zola’s squalid naturalism to Maeterlinck’s other worldly fantasies, but with no sense of proportion or taste. His works are a compendium of the faddish tropes of the period: Flo rence and Venice; Medusa and Ophelia (“the charm of a virgin and a perverse boy,” Sur un portrait de Botticelli ); gems and pop pies (“a breast-plate studded with amethyst grips his torso and he wears a huge crown of enormous purplish poppies,” in Coins de Byzance [ Byzantine Corners ], 1902); melancholy lilies and irises “which revealed to me my infamous and chaste dishonor,” in La forêt bleue [ The Blue Forest ], 1883); barbarians and Byzantium (“Yes, let them come, let them burn all that is here; let them empty my coffers, let them crush my pearls, let them crucify the steward, let them rape my mother,” in Coins de Byzance ); the decorative and esoteric paintings of Gustave Moreau, Jan Toorop, and James Ensor; the actress Sarah Bernhardt, for whom he wrote unproduced plays; the music-hall singer Yvette Guilbert, for whom he composed scabrous ditties; Wagnerian opera and Arthurian legend; grimacing masks and necrophiliac orgies; erotic delirium and odors “of sex, of cosmetics, of sweat.” All this is described in a lapidary style, an indigestible mixture of recondite vocabulary and the latest slang (Figure 5). Lorrain’s fiction is misogynistic, ruled by women whose morbid and perverse psychology is expressed in furnishings, wardrobes, and scents. Madame Litvinoff in Très Russe ( Very Russian , 1886), with the “unsettling smile of the Mona Lisa,” dominates effeminate men, “gentle as a child,” and practices chastity as an erotic refinement. Another of Lorrain’s heroines concentrates on making half-naked acrobats fall from their tra pezes and tightropes. The anemic virgin in Âmes d’automne ( Autumnal Souls, 1898) wants to warm her chilled extremities inside (literally) the bosom of a stable-boy. Depravity is com monplace in courtesans like the “pianist” whose virtuosic fin gers can rouse enfeebled dotards or the twelve-year-old “graveyard hooker” who plays schoolgirl for elderly pedophiles. Lorrain’s overheated imagination revels in extremes. In

Monsieur de Bougrelon (1897), a starving dandy recounts sto ries of grotesque passion. There is the Mexican dancer, raped fifteen times, who has fifteen rubies embedded in her flesh. Les Norontsoff (1902) tells of a fabulously wealthy Russian prince who, among other extravagances, serves his guests three naked tattooed men on a platter and eventually commits suicide to con summate the desires of his delirious fantasies. Another hyper 3'( +'"'0/' &;/(+ 3*57,8" 0#!-,827*,15 *1 .$28-:57,1%5 $: ):2- )2*19,' ), *'5$5%14/,)44#/.-4 ( & 2 '

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Fig. 5. Lorrain as a dying warrior in a costume improvised by Sarah Bernhardt and photographed in her studio.

sensitive neurotic, the title character in Monsieur de Phocas (1910), a combination of Dorian Gray and Mr. Hyde, is obsessed with a statue of Antinous and goes to his death seeking a wonderful shade of green once glimpsed in the eyes of the goddess of lust. A morphine and ether addict, perpetually in failing health, Lorrain excelled at portraying physical decrepi tude and superannuated desire. For him, love consists of the intimate contact of two solitary and incompatible beings. It can be expressed only in excess, leading to madness or violence. Characters who long for beauty tend to be repel lent lunatics or venal perverts. The dominant mood, a sort of mournful and sadistic sensuality, may be derivative (think Al gernon Charles Swinburne, Joris-Karl Huysmans, or Jules Bar bey d’Aurevilly), but the overwrought style is all his own. Although Lorrain was infatuated with the stage, his own plays had scant success. The best attended was his version of Prometheus, performed in 1900 at an open-air amphitheater in Orange and drowned out by a thunderstorm. The flamboy ant actor Édouard De Max, Lorrain’s histrionic counterpart, played it in the nude, and the hairdresser who had depilated his body placed the cuttings for sale in his shop window with the sign: “Tuffts [ sic : poiles ] from the great tragedian De Max” (Figure 6). Caricaturists had a field day with Lorrain’s pigeon-breasted posing, particularly his desire to be elected to the Académie, an institution he attacked in his columns. Lorrain was pilloried in Carle Armory’s comedy Le monsieur aux chrysanthémes (1908; the title parodies La dame aux camélias ). Its camp antihero is a sought-after celebrity journalist who revels in destroying repu tations and thwarting heterosexual love affairs. The subject was considered so daring that no actor of repute would take the part. Note that Armory’s play appeared only after Lorrain had vanished from the scene. Much as he had relished notoriety, he

Fig. 6. De Max as Prometheus. Photo by Boissonnas and Tapinier, Orange.

would have riposted savagely to such a frontal attack. Near death, impelled partly by patriotism, partly by a sense of wan ing fashion, Lorrain overturned the idols of his youth in his un finished novel Pelléastres ( Fans of Pelléas , 1910), savaging æsthetes along with the German Wagner and the Belgian Maeterlinck. Fed up with Paris, he settled in Nice with his one true love, his ever-faithful mother. There he died at the age of

fifty, succumbing not to the embraces of a circus roustabout but to an enema that perforated a colon already ravaged by tu berculosis, syphilis, and drug abuse (Figure 7). Detested by most of his contemporaries and underval ued by his immediate poster ity, Lorrain’s amalgam of lowlife culture and preciosity, of exhibitionist journalism and artistic aspirations, has come to be seen as forerunners of Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. His musky writing may be an acquired taste, but, then, so is caviar.

The G & LR Fig. 7. Lorrain’s last photograph.

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ESSAY

The Inscrutable John Singer Sargent A NDREW H OLLERAN

“Y OU KNOW, I’m terrified of your brother,” a guest confessed at the dinner that John Singer Sargent’s sister Emily, who lived just a few blocks from him in London, gave on what turned out to be the last night of her brother’s life. And why not? There had always been something formidable about Sargent, something that discour aged questions, certainly about his personal life. He was, in the estimation of Paul Fisher, his latest biographer, “a shy and pri vate man.” And then there were his accomplishments. On the night of that dinner, Sargent was the famous portrait painter of the great and good of Anglo-American society: people like Teddy Roo sevelt, Woodrow Wilson, the Duke of Marlborough, George V, John D. Rockefeller, and innumerable socialites. He had been given five honorary degrees, sixteen exhibition prizes, a Légion d’honneur, and membership in the Royal Academy, and he was chairman of the British School in Rome. He was an autodidact, fluent in Italian and French—the book beside his bed the night he

way was so impressive at an early age that his parents decided to nurture it, culminating in their move to Paris so that Sargent could study with one of the established painters who took stu dents—in his case, Carolus-Duran, who admitted him on the spot after seeing his work. Even Sargent’s classmates recog nized his superior gifts, and his first submission to the Paris Salon, a portrait of his teacher, was a hit. Sargent is still thought of as a portrait painter today—he made so many—though his favorite medium was watercolors. Watercolors seem to have been done for his own pleasure, oil paintings to make a living. About portraits Sargent was de flating. “A portrait,” he used to say, “is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.” But it was a genre at which he excelled. Being chosen for the annual Paris Salon was not enough; he wanted his portraits of women in society to create a buzz—which they did, until he went too far with his portrait of Amélie Gautreau, the New Or leans-born wife of a French merchant banker. The painting called Madame X so scandalized Paris—in part because Sar gent had depicted one of the straps on her black dress slipping gent thrived. When people would knock on his door asking for work, Sargent, if interested, would invite them in and ask them to remove their clothes “so I can see your figure.” One of these was Nicola D’Inverno, an amateur boxer who became not only Sargent’s model but his studio manager and valet for 25 years, until D’Inverno got into a fight with the bartender at the Hotel Vendome in Boston and Sargent had to let him go. Long before that, however, Sargent’s studio on Tite Street became the lodestar of fashionable London. For his own pleasure, he joined fellow painters who gathered to paint outdoors in a village called Broadway in the Cotswolds. At the height of his career, Sargent was so much in demand that he was able to charge for one portrait what it would take to purchase a house. However, toward the end he became ex tremely tired of doing them. “Paw-traits,” he called them, mock ing the accent of the people he painted. One of the things he hated about the sessions was the fact that the artist was expected to make small talk with his sitter while he painted. To relieve the strain of capturing his subject he would withdraw behind a cur tain during breaks and stick his tongue out at his sitter. Even the down her shoulder—that when putting the strap back did not solve the problem, he moved to London, on Henry James’ advice, to start all over again. In London, he took over a studio on Tite Street that had once been used by Whistler. Across the street was Oscar Wilde, whose article on London models—“a class of peo ple whose sole profession is to stand and pose”—depicted the milieu in which Sar

died in his sleep in 1925 was Voltaire’s Dic tionnaire philosophique —and, in Fisher’s phrase, “a card-carrying workaholic.” He was physically impressive too—tall, bearded (which hid a recessive chin), with large blue eyes that were slightly protuberant. Two of his self-portraits show a face one could justifiably call haughty. In the later por trait, he looks like a British aristocrat, which is evidently how Sargent wanted to present

We are left with three possibilities: Sargent was asexual or, like Henry James, married to his work, or so clever that he had sex with men that left no trace.

himself to the world: as one of the people he painted. The blurred photograph on the cover of Paul Fisher’s new biography, on the other hand, shows a different man: round-faced, with slightly bulging eyes and the air of someone who might lose his temper at any moment, almost a figure from Fawlty Towers . Quite hand some when young, in later life, even in formal dinner dress, he was said to look “like a sailor gone wrong.” In fact, Sargent had in almost all respects gone right. The son of American parents who went to Europe on a visit and never came back, Sargent had the sort of childhood that makes Henry James’s peripatetic upbringing look stable. The Sargents were rich, but not rich enough to stay wherever they wanted. Instead, after losing two children in infancy, they traveled to places that they thought would be salubrious for their surviving offspring (John and two sisters). In winter the family went to the south of France, in summer to the Alps, where Sargent formed a lifelong love affair with mountaineering while hiking with his father. His talent for sketching what he saw along the

Andrew Holleran’s latest novel is The Kingdom of Sand .

March–April 2023

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