Gay Studies
There are no collections at the Ransom Center specifically devoted to the subject of homosexuality, but various collections contain materials that document, in fact and fiction the lives of gay men and women.
Gay Lives: Men
Diaries & Letters
The diaries kept by the earnest George Ives (1867-1950)—Oscar Wilde's friend, campaigner for fairer treatment of gay men, and admirer of Edward Carpenter—span more than half a century (1890s-1940s),and are rich in accounts of what at least one gay man thought and did, day by day. Also very lengthy are the diaries of Charles Henri Ford (1913-2002), avant-gardist, boyfriend of the artist Pavel Tchelitchew, poet, and flâneur. The diaries of Walter Willard "Spud" Johnson (1897-1968), who served as columnist and editor of the Taos newspapers Laughing Horse and The Horse Fly, are full of racy details of seductions and chance encounters amidst the New Mexico art scene of the 1920s and 30s. Additional perspectives and insights can be found in letters to and from William Goyen (1915-1983), who was an occasional participant in the New Mexico set.
As for letters, the archives of the British Society for Sexual Psychology (B.S.S.) (1910s-1940s) are full of miscellaneous material. The Society, founded by George Ives and others, concerned itself with all sorts of sexual matters, but, from the beginning, had a strong and loyal membership of homosexuals. The Society's correspondence was usually with strangers, and when these letter writers are gay, their stories or requests for information are quite revealing of the lives led by gay men at that time.
Early, if not the first, instances of autobiographical case studies in sexual psychology in England appeared in the Sexual Inversion volume (1897) of Havelock Ellis's (1859-1939) Studies in the Psychology of Sex. There are more than fifty of these queer self-descriptions, and the task of collecting, editing, and publishing them is amply described in letters between Ellis, John Addington Symonds, and Edward Carpenter, all located in the Havelock Ellis Archive. The archive may be investigated most fruitfully, as well, by those interested in the evolving concept of the omosexual and his place in society.
Crime & Punishment
Much of what might have remained private regarding the lives of certain gay men was revealed in their trials, sentencing hearings, appeals, parole hearings, and the related unpleasant occurrences. The Ransom Center has significant material pertaining to the following cases.
The material for Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), who was convicted of gross indecency in 1895, is excellent not only for the things that he wrote himself, but also for the numerous collections centered on his friends and enemies, biographers, apologists, publishers, family, and boyfriends. Because the archive is too large to summarize here, the Center's archival guide to Wilde will serve as the best starting point for researchers. (This finding aid is available in the Reading Room and on the Center's Web site.)
Writer Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903-1979) was convicted of the same crime as Oscar Wilde. He was one of the more notable victims of the strong police actions against homosexuals in Britain in the 1950s. The circumstances of his arrest and the details of his prison experience are given in his book The Verdict of You All (1955); further particulars of his varied life are found in his correspondence. The manuscript and papers related to the book, plus his letters, are within his archive. The specter of these same police actions is evoked in Sir Compton MacKenzie's novel, Thin Ice, (1956) the manuscript and other working papers of which are here. Its protagonist is probably loosely based on the notorious MP, Tom Driberg (1905-1976).
Babe Leopold (1904-1971) and Dickie Loeb (1905-1936) were convicted of murder in 1924. There are photographs, many unpublished, of these and other notorious homosexual murderers and victims in the archives of the New York Journal American. The correspondence between Nathan "Babe" Leopold and Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) in the latter's "Court of Last Resort" archives provides more insight into the Leopold-Loeb case. Additional unpublished photographs of Leopold are scattered among the correspondence there, along with intriguing third-party correspondence, including a lengthy letter from one of Leopold's fellow prisoners that confirms the continuing homosexual practices and attitudes of both Leopold and Loeb after their imprisonment.
A large collection of photographs of actor Ramon Novarro (1899-1968), who was murdered in 1968 by the brother-hustlers Tom and Paul Ferguson, can be found in The Robbins Collection of Performing Arts. Stills, studio shots, and a few candid photographs illustrate his career from silent movies (notably Ben Hur, 1927) to well into the talkies. The Robbins Collection also contains similar photographic files on film actor and interior designer William Haines (1900-1973), who was not murdered, although he may have been arrested. For additional photographs of both Novarro and Haines, see the Davis-Kendall Collection.
Roger Casement (1864-1916), a consular diplomat, tireless campaigner for human rights, and Irish nationalist, was convicted of treason and hanged in 1916. Though Casement's homosexuality was not a factor during his trial, it was exploited afterwards to discourage any case for clemency. A small archive created by lawyer H. Montgomery Hyde (1907-1989) while he was preparing The Trial of Sir Roger Casement (1960) could be used to examine the social and legal issues raised during and after Casement's trial.
Scandal
Many twentieth-century scandals involving homosexuality may be documented in the Ransom Center collections. To give one example, Beverley Nichols's (1898-1983) A Case of Human Bondage (1966) is a furious attack on W. Somerset Maugham on the occasion of Maugham's philippic against his wife, Syrie. Nichols defends the wife, attacks the husband, and demolishes Maugham's minion Gerald Haxton, who is revealed by Nichols to have been arrested for gross indecency in 1916 and deported as a result. The Center has a total of fourteen of Nichols' works in draft form, including the manuscript for this book.
Oscar Wilde's boyfriend, soi-disant poet Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), was litigious, difficult, and cruel to many of his acquaintances. The guide to the Center's Wilde archive, mentioned above, identifies most of the Douglas materials at the Center. Of particular note are the 1925 letter to Frank Harris in which Douglas, for the first and last time, admits the exact nature of his sexual relations with Wilde, and the numerous entries in George Ives's diaries that progress from intoxicated attraction to total vilification of Douglas.
Fiction & Drama
Jean Genet's (1910-1986) subversive, sacrilegious, and hysterical Notre Dame des fleurs (1944) is here in a draft version; equally outrageous in quite a different way is Gore Vidal's (b. 1925) Myra Brackenridge (1968), present in typescript with manuscript revisions. In addition, the Center has a draft of the latter's early and more subdued The City and the Pillar (1948). Each of these three novels would be included in any canon of twentieth-century gay fiction.
Tennessee Williams' (1911-1983) short story Hard Candy (1959), his novella The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950), and his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) are here in draft fragments, revisions, and other versions in his voluminous archive. The Center also has various manuscript fragments of James Baldwin's (1924-1987) Another Country (1962).
Jean Cocteau's (1889-1963) highly colored account of his stay as an employee of a Marseilles brothel, Le Livre blanc (1928), is in the Carlton Lake Collection in successive drafts as well as in the scarce first edition.
A most ingenious treatment of the last days of General Charles Gordon (1833-1885), the martyr of Khartoum, is to be found in Robin Maugham's (1916-1981) novel The Last Encounter (1972). Maugham also wrote an entirely fictional account of homosexual intrigue called The Servant (1966). Working papers and drafts of both are here. Those interested in General Gordon should see the set of maps of the Nile that he drew for the Royal Geographical Society in the 1860s and 70s.
Paul Scott (1920-1978) created several gay characters, both male and female, in the four novels that comprise The Raj Quartet (1965-1975). One, who is essential to the plot, is that darkest of queer villains, Ronald Merrick. An examination of successive drafts of the novels in the Paul Scott archive reveals dense dialogues and descriptions involving Merrick that were altered or dropped from the published version.
A curious amalgam of fact and fiction can be found in Compton Mackenzie's (1883-1972) own copy of his novel Vestal Fire (1927). Like another of his books, Extraordinary Women (1928), it is a lightly disguised depiction of the lives of gay men and women in Capri just before World War I. The Center's copy of Vestal Fire has been extra-illustrated by the author himself with photographs of the real life counterparts of his fictional characters. Successive drafts of both of these novels are here in the author's immense archives.
Photography
While the Ransom Center has stray prints by Mapplethorpe, Horst, and Herbert List, among others, the Literary Files of the Center's Photography Collection contain the more interesting materials. For example, the Tennessee Williams boxes are very rich: from baby photos to a handful taken in his last years; boyfriends, agents, actors and actresses, hangers-on—in short, a pictorial documentation of the life of a gay man in and out of the theater.
A similar, though seemingly edited, record is preserved for Charles Henri Ford, containing a snapshot of Ford by Gertrude Stein and some very carefully composed portraits by Carl Van Vechten. Finally, George Ives files are a perfect counterpart to his diaries: veiled and elliptic.
There is one small collection, and one even smaller folder, which document, in photographs, homosexuality as a subject. The small collection was formed by Michael Emory, and consists solely of prints, some his own work, used to illustrate his compilation The Gay Picture Guide Book (1978). The small folder is within the Abeles photojournalism archive in the Performing Arts Collection. It appears that one assignment was to photograph the fags (the actual word used) at a place they were known to congregate: a section of New York's Central Park called The Rambles. The photographer whose assignment it was must have been straight, for all pictures are of those congregating in or near the entrance to The Rambles, whereas any queen could have told him that the action was within. Nevertheless, the nearly one hundred images of New York gays milling about, a short time after the Stonewall riots (June 1969), are historically important.
Finally, the researcher may wish to glance at the two albums of pornographic photographs assembled by Louis Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven (1854-1921) at the beginning of the twentieth century. There are several gay layouts in this very rare collection.
Art
With a few exceptions, the Art Collection should be investigated in the same way as the Photography Collection: by name. This approach will reveal art by and about Tennessee Williams and Oscar Wilde, for example, and portraits of Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and W. Somerset Maugham. Sometimes the artist and the subject are both gay, so that within the Don Bachardy (b. 1934) archive are drawings of Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden (1907-1973), and Christopher Isherwood, and within Andy Warhol (1928-1987) are portraits of Gerald Malanga (b. 1943).
The uneasy and weird woodcuts of Ralph Chubb (1892-1960), boy-loving mystic, are found in the Center's near-comprehensive trove of his privately-printed books.
There are also some homoerotic drawings in the large cache of Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) sketches, which are in the Carlton Lake Collection. Related, and perhaps more interesting, are the pornographic plates that illustrate a medley of Jean Genet texts which have the title: Vingt lithographies pour un poème que j'ai lu (undated, ca. 1940s). Although it appears to have been published, the Ransom Center knows of no copy other than its own.
Show Business
One would expect to find great things within the collections of performing arts materials, since so many gay men and women have worked in show business. Indeed, there are many studio and even candid photographs of notorious actors, directors, producers, and agents; assorted letters and other documents by well-known names; clippings and scrapbooks–all scattered across many collections.
The Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) archive contains a wonderful cache of letters, packets, and other debris fired off to Swanson by that most eccentric filmmaker, gossip, and gadfly Kenneth Anger (b. 1927), revealing nothing about Swanson, but much about Anger.
Delving into the David O. Selznick (1907-1965) archive will turn up miscellaneous findings: a letter in support of the rehabilitation of the director James Whale (1896-1957); a talent scout's rejection of Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000) as too effeminate for a role; the delicious suggestion that a property called "Daddy's Boy" should be bought as a vehicle for the young Roddy McDowall. It is better, with this archive, to focus on certain personalities in depth (and usually across many boxes of material). For example, if all of the material on the director George Cukor (1899-1983) is examined, surely there should be some confirmation of his arrest for a homosexual offense, some criticism of his all-male pool parties, some reference to objections taken to him by Clark Gable during the filming of Gone With the Wind. Similarly, in all of the Henry Willson (1911?-1978) files there should be evidence of his aggressive promotion of hot-ticket male stars, new discoveries for which he was known. Yet such confirmations, criticisms, references, and evidence are hard to come by. Instead, one finds the rather dry, but still illuminating, documents that show the business-like relations between studios on the one hand, and directors such as Cukor or talent-scouts such as Henry Willson on the other hand. These correspondence files are as intriguing for the matters they address as they are for what they clearly ignore. There are always surprises, such as the fasci-nating series of contracts, letters, memos, and telegrams which center around the personality and career of the young Roddy McDowall (1928-1998) with alarming glimpses of his grasping mother and oblivious father.
Other Sources
For those interested in a broader enquiry into homophiles' lives and accomplishments without regard to the specifically gay content of either, names are the best entrée for Ransom Center catalog records, finding lists, archival descriptions, and Web pages. A few examples are the books that William Beckford (1760-1844) owned; the entire theatrical life of Tennessee Williams in drafts of plays and correspondence; letters of the impossibly precious Robert, duc de Montesquiou (1855-1921); and hundreds of photographs by Carl Van Vechten (1932-1964).
Gay Lives: Women
The Ransom Center's lesbian materials are more elusive and quieter than its materials about gay men. In the collections are diaries kept by gay women and several series of notable letters to and from them.
Major Collections
The real strengths of the collections relevant to lesbianism can be found in the papers of a number of famous writers.
Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943), née Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall, who assumed the name John in private life, has the distinction of having written the pre-eminent lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness. This novel, and her other prose, has, for lesbians, a resonance and authenticity of description that is little affected by any critical estimation of its literary quality. The Center has many of Hall's works in manuscript, including The Well of Loneliness. It also has some of her diaries and a number of letters from and to her, supplemented by a large collection of photographs of Hall, her family, friends, and favorite pets. In addition, there is an extensive group of papers kept by her sweetheart and long-term partner Una, Lady Troubridge, (1887-1963) including Troubridge's voluminous diaries and correspondence. This collection is rounded out by the imploring letters of the gold-digger Evguenia Souline, (1904-1958?) the Russian nurse émigrée who insinuated herself into Hall's life until the very end. The archive of lawyer Morris Ernst (1888-1976) can be explored for the public reception of Hall's magnum opus. Ernst defended The Well when attempts were made to censor it in this country. His papers contain not only documents relating to the British (successful) and American (unsuccessful) censorship efforts, but also many letters by fellow authors who supported Hall, and a handful of letters from those who did not.
With Carson McCullers (1917-1967) the Ransom Center has that great rarity, a comprehensive collection. All of her works are here in drafts, revisions, published versions, translations, and adaptations. Besides her forte—outsiders, misfits, and marginal characters—she has at least one main figure who is tragically queer, Captain Penderton in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1951), and one other, Frankie in The Member of the Wedding (1951), who is suspiciously tomboyish. McCullers's life is as well documented as her work. There are letters to and from her husband, Reeve; correspondence with David Diamond, to whom both she and her husband were attracted; many communications with her sympathetic psychologist; and correspondence with members of her family. The archive is nicely rounded out with a huge collection of photographs, portraits, and some objects, including clothes, that belonged to McCullers.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) knew everybody and wrote a lot. The Ransom Center has only a few minor works of hers in manuscript, but a more respectable showing of letters to and from her. One group of correspondence is between Stein and Charles Henri Ford, mentioned in the previous section, and another large group consists of letters from Stein to the artist Sir Francis Rose (1909-1979). What gives the Center's collection distinction, however, is two ancillary assemblages: a nice cache of photographs of Stein, and the nachlass of her secretary and companion, Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967). This latter consists of bills, notes, telegrams, bread-and-butter letters, and other miscellaneous material that was protected by Toklas late in her own life and long after the death of Stein. It is poignant reading, showing the often unsettled state of affairs—financial, societal, legal, and romantic—of an elderly gay person whose life partner has died.
The Honourable Victoria Sackville-West (1892-1962), usually called Vita, though sometimes, much to her annoyance, called Lady Nicolson, has renown as a novelist, garden writer, and pastoral poet. She is also known for her several personalities: the gay wife of a gay husband (Sir Harold Nicolson, diplomat and biographer) in a much-analyzed marriage; the thwarted heiress of one of England's finest houses, Knole; and a prolific seducer of married or otherwise engaged women, as well as a few men. The Center has assorted holdings of Sackville-West's manuscripts and letters, which are supported by reactions to her works and herself found in the books and papers of those whose lives she touched. The Center has many editions of Virginia Woolf's (1882-1941) valentine to her, the novel Orlando (1928), and one of these has been heavily annotated by Vita and Harold's son, Nigel Nicolson, to spell out the corresponding details of the protagonist, Orlando, and the real-life Vita. In addition, one of Sackville-West's victims, Roy Campbell, (1902-1957) whose wife Mary was seduced by Mrs. Nicolson, responded with a blistering poetic attack within The Georgiad (1931). The Center has a printed copy of the poem in which Campbell has fleshed out his accusations in manuscript in no uncertain terms. The archive of the parlor poetry of the Sweet Singer of Nova Scotia, Mina Lumpen (1917-1964), gives amorous references to Sackville-West that are only partially obscured by conventional phrasing.
Willa Cather's (1873-1947) private life is often not well understood, partly because she chose not to reveal it, and partly because she did her best to destroy the evidence that would allow scholars to reconstruct it. It is not surprising, then, that in the Center's general run of manuscripts there are only four of her personal letters. Cather would rather have been remembered for her work, and this side of her life is wonderfully documented in the lengthy correspondence between her and her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, found in the latter's enormous archive.
Other Sources
Other areas for researching the gay lives of women include the working drafts of Mary McCarthy's (1912-1989) The Group (1963), which introduces the memorable character of Lakey, as well as the manuscripts and notes pertaining to the character of Barbie in Paul Scott's (1920-1978) The Raj Quartet (1965-1975). The accusation that Barbie has pursued a love affair with Mabel Layton creates a whirlwind of trouble for all concerned, but especially for Barbie herself, who becomes mute and dies. Whether the accusation is true or false is almost beside the point, as seems to be true for quite a different work, Lillian Hellman's (1905-1984) The Children's Hour (1934), which is here in Hellman's manuscript. The author's own material for this searing play may be supplemented by archival material in the Performing Arts collection, having to do with the difficulties of its production.
As for show business, the Center has a small file that may be of interest, as well as some fine photographs of several peculiar actresses. The file is within the Selznick archive: it documents the search for an actress to play Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940) and subsequent dealings with the successful applicant, Judith Anderson (1898-1992). The studio stills and publicity shots of Louise Brooks (1906-1985) are especially attractive, while those of Lilyan Tashman (1899-1934) are both camp and frightening.
Finally, there is documentation for one lesbian crime in the morgue of the New York Journal American: the stabbing of Lana Turner's paramour, Johnny Stompanato, by Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane, (b. 1943) who later revealed her lesbianism. The morgue has several large folders of photographs of Crane, Turner, and lounge lizard Stompanato; these may be supplemented by the large clippings file on the case kept for Erle Stanley Gardner in the Legal Cases section of his archive.
