GLR March-April 2026

some youngster.” Whitman called Wilde a “‘splendid boy [who] … is so frank and outspoken, and manly.’” Both men emphasized that their intimate time in Whitman’s den led to a meaningful and pleasurable bonding experience. Although Wilde had only published a selection of poetry, Whitman commented on how Wilde was already becoming a lit erary face of Victorian Æstheticism. Wilde knew that he was in the presence of an important literary mentor, announcing: “I have come to you as to one with whom I have been acquainted almost from the cradle.” In his letter to Stafford, Whitman responded that he was pleased that Wilde had “the good sense to take a great fancy to me.” It’s fair to say that the meeting took on a queer sen sual tone, since both men later commented that physical touch and a possible kiss were exchanged. This erotic intellectual con nection was not lost on poet and professor Helen Gray Cone, who

latched onto this theme in her fictional poem “Narcissus in Cam den,” written in 1892, the year Whitman died. § A FTER W HITMAN ’ S D EATH , Wilde’s friends George Cecil Ives and John Addington Symonds asked for his thoughts on Whitman’s legacy. Wilde recalled their first meeting in Camden and said that he could still feel the “kiss of Walt Whitman … on my lips.” Be cause of the age difference, it’s possible to see Whitman and Wilde’s intellectual and suggestively erotic relationship as the 19th-century version of ancient Greek pederasty. Wilde’s com ments about the Greekness of Whitman’s poetry and physical ap pearance seem to carry a hidden message. Their first meeting was so intense that Wilde wrote to Whitman on March 1, 1882: “Be fore I leave America I must see you again—there is no one in this

Geoffry Wheatly Cobb and His Youthful Crew HISTORY MEMO

P ETER J ORDAAN “T as abominable, is so utterly silly, that I al most fail to believe the idea can be seriously entertained, & almost fail to realise the risk.” Geoffry Wheatly Cobb, the wealthy owner of Caldicot Castle in Wales, wrote this in 1909, when he was 51. Cobb had turned to his diary to confide the sex he’d just had with a crew member for his training frigate Foudroyant . The handsome youth, half his age, “came quietly to my cabin & into my bed & lay naked in my arms.” Cobb had picked up strawberry-blond Will Swadling as a sixteen-year-old smok ing on a bench at Newport Station. Swadling was among many trainees Cobb recruited and occasionally bedded: fetching youths were engaged in conversation, and sometimes more, whenever and wherever sighted. Cobb’s diaries provide a rare, inti mate view of life within that fraction of so ciety then known as “The Upper Ten Thousand.” His fortune enabled him to be master and commander of an alternative realm in which his forbidden sexuality could be freely indulged. However, the di aries are also a window into a remarkable maritime enterprise. A true mid-Victorian, born in 1858, Cobb hailed from an upper-class family that had been building wealth since the 18th century through land, banking, and paper manufac turing. Lord of the manors of Brecon and Caldicot and justice of the peace for Brecon and Monmouth, he was also a gentleman honored for his charity. However, as he told his diary: “It is not only in my case that Phi lanthropy [in Greek] is really Pæderasty HAT THIS, the most perfectly natural & necessary & easy joy in the world should be branded

[ditto].” “Supposing everyone knew,” Cobb wrote, “could they possibly blame me, or if they did, could they really feel the horror they express? … These lads are of my own kind. We can be naked together, we can per form natural functions together without a suspicion of shame in ourselves or of blame from others.” Cobb’s other passion was naval history. After he learned in 1892 that the Admiralty

pense—with an experience their parents could never have afforded, far superior to anything the Royal Navy offered. “They have had the time of their lives,” Cobb wrote in 1922, “and I have seen them leave much better boys than they came.” For a quarter-century Cobb moored the Foudroyant at Falmouth in Cornwall, where she was a beloved scenic addition to its har bor. The crew, mostly Cornish and Welsh, became part of the community. The ship’s band played at local functions, and the crew’s football prowess was regularly on display at matches. Several also married Falmouth girls and settled there. In 1912, Cobb was bestowed Freedom of the Bor ough for his contributions to the town, and in 1925, after he’d saved another historic warship, Implacable , a newspaper would print: “His name will be held in remem brance for generations to come.” Cobb believed he was doing God’s work. During one Sabbath service on the Foudroyant he experienced an ecstasy at the sight of what he and the Lord had created, writing afterward: “The blue uniforms & the fair strong faces & bright hair & the vivid colour of the flags & the scarlet ports & the bright brasswork & the brown pol ished bitts & stanchions. And I & God who made it & love it. I took His work & bur nished it & set it in this perfect frame. I couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t loved it with the passion that men call infamous be cause they cannot share it.” More than a fulfilled fantasy, his training ships were the realization of a wet dream on an epic scale. “I realise fully how open I am to blame in the world’s eyes,” Cobb wrote. “Not in regard to the young boys when I take them. I don’t think a mother could love them with a tenderer or more blameless love. But

Geoffry Wheatly Cobb, ca. 1900.

was selling Lord Nelson’s flagship HMS Foudroyant for scrap, he bought the ship with his father’s help and spent the im mense sum of £25,000, restoring it and turning it into a training ship. In 1897 the Foudroyant was wrecked in a storm, and with his father’s death, Cobb inherited most of the family’s fortune. The following year he replaced his lost ship with the HMSTrin comalee , an 1817 frigate. After a refitting, he renamed her Foudroyant . Over several decades, Cobb’s generosity, however self-serving, provided hundreds of working-class youths—whom he uni formed, fed, educated, and trained at his ex

TheG & LR

18