GLR May June

n’t Franklin “notice all the naked men cruising on the river?” That’s a good ques- tion. “This bathhouse stuff,” Fred declares, “is of monstrous historical importance. Schiff has a case of what YRH calls Ron Chernowitis, of Doris Kearns Goodwinism, denying a truth writ so large she should choke on it.” You do have to wonder: how did Schiff shrug off Franklin’s daily gay-bathhouse regime? Or take Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark, who mapped the Louisiana Purchase. “Lewis, a lifelong bachelor for whom the company of other men is more congenial than real life, is ... very much in love with Clark. ... This love will eventually de- stroy him.” Fred upbraids Lewis’ biographer, StephenAmbrose, for failing to see this. “How can any sentient person read any- thing about Lewis without realizing the man was gay? Not a lit- tle bit, not just sometimes, but totally and wholly gay?” Then there was Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain to his mil- lions of fans. Clemens extolled the “stalwart, muscular, daunt- less young men” of the Nevada mining country, “none but erect, bright-eyed, quick moving, strong-handed young giants ... a splendid population.” Fred notes that these men outnumbered women eighteen to one. Clemens was the lifelong close friend of a travel writer named Charles Warren Stoddard, “as flam- boyantly gay as they came.” Fred quotes Clemens: “Charles is tender and he touches me in spirit as well as body.” Fred has a lot to say about Clemens’ gay love life. But the great author’s “well-received” biographer, Ron Powers, is silent on the sub- ject. Indeed, Clemens’ “undoubted homosexuality has never been explored by any of his biographers.” Wait a second! the hardheaded reader might exclaim. Is any of this really proven? Isn’t it all just innuendo, and rather out- landish at that? Maybe it’s a good thing that Fred Lemish re- mains a novelistic creature. He isn’t, after all, an actual historian. Precisely, says Lemish. “God save us from the het- erosexual historian!” This is a good place to take a step back and ponder the fact that the evaluation of historical evidence has always been a mys- terious business. It’s not nearly as clear-cut a process as one might like. Here’s an example: Fred modestly omits from his narrative an exchange between Larry Kramer and the late histo- rian David Herbert Donald. It culminated with Kramer remark- ing that Donald was a “dried old heterosexual prune at Harvard.” The accusation so impressed Donald that he quoted it in his final book, We Are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends , in which Donald sought to refute claims that Abe and his friend Joshua Speed were sexual lovers. A line of evidence that Donald cited was this: in the American 19th century, gay sex affairs “were not merely infrequent; they were against the law.” Donald went further, pointing out that the historical record contains love letters between 19th-century male adolescents: “The letters between such male lovers are full of references to sleeping together, kisses, caresses, and open longing for each other. There can be no doubt that these were erotic relationships, but with rare exceptions, they do not appear to have been sex- ual relationships.” Oh really? And what is this based upon? These letters don’t support Donald’s claim that gay sex was rare in the days of Lincoln, but they very strongly favor the op- posite conclusion. Notes between teenage “lovers” talking about

bedtime and kisses and caresses and open longings? If that isn’t what we call a “smok- ing gun,” what is? What would it take to persuade straight historians that Sam Clemens had gay af- fairs in the Wild West? We could start by pointing to the lopsided male-female pop-

The American People Volume One: Search for My Heart by Larry Kramer Farrar, Straus and Giroux 775 pages, $40.

ulation ratio and talk about typical sexual behavior in hyper- male environments such as prisons or the open seas. Next, review Clemens’ tributes to lads’ beauty in the Nevada mining camps. Work up to attested intimacies between Clemens and Charles Stoddard and other men. Would that put homosexual- ity on the table for these historians? Probably not. But why not? How can evidence add up to such different things for the gay eye and the straight? At one level the answer is obvious: in some circumstances gay observers know what to

May–June 2015

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