Historical pederastic couples

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Over the course of history there have been a number of recorded love affairs between adult men and adolescent boys. All these bonds followed at least some aspects of classical pederasty, which has both love and mentoring as principal characteristics. While the erotic element is routinely present, in some cases the relationship remained chaste, in emulation of the Socratic ideal, or out of religious principle. In some of these cases both members eventually became well known historical figures, in others only one of the two achieved that distinction.

Though all such relationships are by definition homoerotic in nature, the individuals engaging in them do not necessarily identify themselves as homosexual, and in many cases the relationship is concurrent with heterosexual marriage for the older partners. In antiquity and non-western cultures the pattern is for the younger partners to remain in the relationship until reaching maturity. Upon coming of age the majority of them would be expected to marry and fulfil other typical adult duties. In modern western culture however, these relationships sometimes evolve into life-long partnerships to the exclusion of heterosexual marriage for either partner.

The legal status of these relationships has varied with culture and jurisdiction. In antiquity pederasty was sometimes mandated by law,^[1] a requirement eventually superseded under the early Christians by prohibition under pain of death or castration for both partners. This move was impelled at least in part by their intent to promote Christianity by suppressing the Greco-Roman religion. This was accomplished by the systematic destruction of its central features, such as the Eleusinian mysteries, the Olympic Games, and – equally important – classical pederasty, which was an important educational and cultural aspect of that religion, and which had a number of cults sacralizing pederastic homosexuality, such as that of Antinous, and that of Dionysus at Lerna.

From eastern lands like Japan, Mughal India, Central Asia, to the Middle East and North Africa, the relationships were variously integrated into the social structure. In the west their status has varied. Grouped with other corporal transgressions under the rubric of sodomy, their treatment ranged from benign indulgence to death by hanging or funeral pyre for both members. At present pederastic relationships between unrelated individuals are legal in most countries as long as the younger member is above the local age of consent (which varies worldwide from 14 to 21) and that age is set low enough to include some part of the teenage years.

Contents 1 Problematics of the pederastic record 2 Typology of relationships 3 Known or presumed pederastic couples 3.1 Antiquity 3.2 Oriental world 3.3 Middle Ages 3.4 Pre-modern period 3.5 Nineteenth century 3.6 20th and 21st centuries 4 Notes 5 Sources 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Problematics of the pederastic record

In the premodern and modern west their equivocal status has made pederastic relationships hard to document, since it was in the interest of both participants to keep the relationship secret. According to historian Michael Kaylor,

[S]ince in Victorian England ‘homosexual behaviour became subject to increased legal penalties, notably by the Labouchère Amendment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which extended the law to cover all male homosexual acts, whether committed in public or private’, expecting ‘verifiable data’ concerning their unconventional desires is the ultimate scholarly presumption.^[2]

Another obstacle to the documentation of such relationships has been the destruction of "incriminating" personal and public records, either to "preserve the honor" of the individuals involved, or as retribution against their perceived transgressions.

Some examples of this destruction of personal records by solicitous next-of-kin are the burning of the papers of Richard Francis Burton (among which his autobiographical magnum opus) by his wife at the time of his death, a project reported to have taken a number of days. Likewise, the sister of Horatio Alger destroyed his correspondence upon his death. The same fate befell the personal papers of Philip II, Duke of Orléans, whose wife entered his chambers upon his death and disposed of his voluminous correspondence with his various minions. Death is not the only occasion when such records are lost. The wife of André Gide burned thirty years of almost daily correspondence between them ("The best of myself," he later claimed) upon learning of his elopement to London with Marc Allégret, his teenage boyfriend, declaring she had been left with "nothing else to do."

Nevertheless a very small percentage of these relationships has become public knowledge, usually because one of the members disclosed it as part of his artistic production, or because the relationship came to the attention of the authorities and the legal record was preserved. In recent years, with the greater public acceptance of homosexual expression, such information has become somewhat easier to come by, especially in those cases where the relationship is no longer illegal.

[edit] Typology of relationships

Pederastic relationships fall into two principal categories of sexual expression,

1. Age-structured, in which men pair up with boys concurrent with, or preceding, relationships with women. These relationships are engaged in by individuals regardless of their primary sexual attraction and are usually culturally determined, as exemplified by classical pederasty, shudo, and Florentine sodomy. Such relationships are inherently of a temporary nature, in that their sexual phase lasts only until the coming of age of the younger member. The friendship, however, may continue indefinitely and is seen as one of the chief benefits of such relationships. (In some cultures, such as in Central Asia, this form of age-structured homosexuality may also exhibit a gender-structured aspect, but primarily as a subset and in connection with commercial sex.)
2. Egalitarian (or at least potentially so), in which the relationship is between individuals whose primary attraction is to others of the same sex. These can continue into the adulthood of the younger member, and can be life-long sexual relationships. When occurring in age-structured pederastic cultures, the later phase of such bonds is problematized and seen as transgressive, especially if it displaces the pater familias role of either member. In cultures where pederasty is not as widely practiced by heterosexually-inclined individuals, such as the modern west, it is the earlier phase that is problematized and seen as transgressive of custom and occasionally of law as well. In non-pederastic cultures, these potentially egalitarian bonds make up a greater proportion of pederastic relationships.

[edit] Known or presumed pederastic couples

In the following list the couples are listed in chronological order, and the name of the older partner precedes that of the younger. Though many more men are known to have engaged in such relationships, only those instances in which the name of the younger partner is known are included. In keeping with various traditions which allow (and actually privilege) chaste pederastic relationships (See Philosophy of pederasty and Nazar ill'al-murd), included below are also relationships in which there is evidence of an erotic component even in the absence of actual sexual relations.

[edit] Antiquity

Main article: Pederasty in ancient Greece

• Solon and Peisistratus
  • The law giver was the erastes of the future tyrant, presumably around 590 BCE.
• Peisistratus and Charmus^[3]
• Chariton and Melanippus
  • The two lovers plotted against Phalaris around 560 BCE. They were discovered and tortured to divulge accomplices, but remained silent. The tyrant, impressed, set them free. Their valor and love were celebrated in a Delphic oracle:

Blessed were Chariton and Melanippus:

They showed mortals the way to a friendship that was divine. ^[4]

• Polycrates and Smerdies
  • The love of the tyrant of Samos for his Thracian favorite, some time between 535 and 515, was recorded by the poet Anacreon.^[5]
• Aristogeiton and Harmodius
  • Heroic couple, later lionized by the Athenian democrats, whose 514 BCE plot to assassinate Hippias in was credited with the overthrow of tyranny in Athens.
• Parmenides of Elea and Zeno of Elea
  • According to Plato, Zeno was "tall and fair to look upon" and was "in the days of his youth . . . reported to have been beloved by Parmenides."^[6] This would have occurred around 475 BCE.
• Hiero I of Syracuse and Daelochus
  • Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse surrounded himself with pederastic intellectuals and had a number of lovers.^[7]
• Socrates and Alcibiades
  • Each is said to have saved the life of the other in battle, and the relationship, which took place around 435-430 was said to have been chaste.
• Critias and Euthydemos
  • A relationship mocked by Socrates for the brutish physicality of Critias' desire.
• Xenophon and Clinias
  • Of his eromenos, Xenophon said, "Now I look upon Clinias with more pleasure than upon all the other beautiful things which are to be seen among men; and I would rather be blind as to all the rest of the world, than as to Clinias. And I am annoyed even with night and with sleep, because then I do not see him; but I am very grateful to the sun and to daylight, because they show Clinias to me."^[8]
• Callias III and Autolycus
  • The relationship between the two, in 421 BCE, is touched upon in Xenophon's Symposium, where Callias entertains both the boy and the father.^[9]
• Themistocles and Stesilaus of Ceos
  • Around 420 BCE Themistocles competed for the boy's love with Aristides. As Plutarch recounts, "... they were rivals for the affection of the beautiful Stesilaus of Ceos, and were passionate beyond all moderation."^[10]
• Lysander and Agesilaus II
  • Lysander had been the eispnelas of Agesilaus and was instrumental in the latter's rise to kingship, only to be spurned by him once he rose to power in 399BCE.
• Archidamus and Cleonymus
  • Archidamus, son of Agesilaus II, is described by Xenophon to have been in love with the handsome son of Sphodrias. The boy asked his eispnelas to intervene with the king in favor of his father in a life and death legal matter, promising that Archidamus would never be ashamed to have befriended him. That proved to be so, as he was the first Spartan to die at the battle of Leuctra.^[11]
• Archelaus I of Macedon and Craterus (or Crateuas)
  • The king of Macedon was assassinated in 399 BCE by this eromenos, upon reneging on a promise to give the boy his daughter in marriage.^[12]
• Agesilaus II and Megabates
  • By taking on the Perisan boy as beloved, the king of Sparta was following Spartan law.
• Epaminondas and Asopichos
  • A couple famed for their military prowess, such as in their victory at Leuctra in 371 BCE.
• Philip II of Macedon and Pausanias
  • In 336 BCE Pausanias killed Philip out of jealousy over another lover.
• Alexander the Great and Bagoas.
  • The two met in 330 BCE after the death of Bagoas' previous patron, Darius III.
• Demetrius Phalereus and Diognis
  • Between 317 BC and 307 BC, when he was despot of Athens, he had a boyfriend by the name of Diognis, of whom all the Athenian boys were jealous.^[13]
• Gaozu of Han and Jiri
  • Reigned 206-195 BCE. All Han emperors openly had male lovers.
• Emperor Hui of Han and Hongru
  • Reigned 194-188 BCE. Before the tradition of meritocracy took root, male favorites rose to rank and power.
• Ptolemy VI Philometor and Galestes
  • The king loved the boy not only for his good looks but also for his wisdom. Ca. 170-140 BCE ^[14]
• Emperor Hadrian and Antinous
  • The Roman emperor met this 13 or 14 years old boy from Bithynia in 124 CE. Antinous was deified by Hadrian, when he died six years later. Many statues, busts, coins and reliefs display Hadrian's deep affections for him: http://antinoos.info/antinous.htm
• Herodes Atticus and Polydeukion
  • Herodes emulated Hadrian in establishing a heroic cult for the boy upon his early death ca. 174 CE.

[edit] Oriental world

• Yu Xin and Wang Shao
  • The great writer (513-581) was disowned by his beloved upon the latter's rise to power.
• Walibah ibn al-Hubab and Abu Nuwas
  • Both poets, the younger (b. 756 C.E.) becoming by far the greater of the two.
• Mahmud of Ghazni and Ayaz
  • The two, sultan and slave, are paragons of male love in Islamic culture. Their story depicts the power of love of a man for a youth, where the king becomes a slave to his slave. Mahmud appointed Ayaz ruler of Lahore in 1021. See Malik Ayaz for anecdotes of their relationship

[edit] Middle Ages

• Raoul II, Archbishop of Tours and Jean, Archbishop of Orléans
  • Raoul appointed his adolescent lover (also known as "Flora) in 1097 to the post in Orléans over the vehement objections of other prelates. (Crompton, p.183)
• Ailred of Rievaulx and Simon
  • Ailred, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx who was in his mid-twenties in 1135, was in love with a young monk named Simon, about fourteen years of age. The relationship is thought to have remained chaste.^[15]
• Nicoleto Marmagna and Giovanni Braganza
  • In 1357 the Venetian court I Signori di Notte ("The Gentlemen of the Night") sentenced the boatman and his young servant to be burned at the stake. Their relationship of many years standing had been discovered during a voyage from Mestre to Venice. Crompton, p.202)

[edit] Pre-modern period

• Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and Zeami Motokiyo
  • In the shudo tradition, most shoguns took boys as lovers. Zeami caught the eye of his patron (then 16) at 11, in 1374. He became a playwright, father of Noh theater.
• Ashikaga Yoshimochi and Akamatsu Mochisada
  • Shogun Yoshimochi, son of Yoshimitsu, granted lands which his beloved mismanaged. His own family denounced him, and he had to commit seppuku by order of his lover, the shogun.
• Ashikaga Yoshinori and Akamatsu Sadamura
  • For love of Sadamura, Shogun Yoshinori lost his life in 1441, assassinated by Akamatsu Mitsusuke, whose lands he had wanted to take and give to Sadamura.
• Ashikaga Yoshimasa and Akamatsu Norinao
  • Norinao, granted lands at the time in possession of Yamana Sozen, was attacked by the latter and took his own life. The conflict ballooned into the Ōnin civil war of 1467.

• Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Cavalcanti
  • Ficino lived with the youth at his villa for many years, only separating briefly in 1473, occasion of ardent love letters. ^[16]
• Leonardo da Vinci and Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (il Salaino)
  • Il Salaino entered his service in 1490 at 10, and remained for thirty years. ^{[17] [18]}
• Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco Melzi
  • Melzi was Leonardo's last love. In 1505, he joined Leonardo's household at the age of 15. Later he went to France with him and finally inherited the artistic and scientific works of the great Italian master. ^[19]
• Benedetto Varchi and Giovanni de' Pazzi
  • Varchi's first love affair was with Giovanni, the adolescent son of a local aristocrat. The father had Varchi knifed upon finding his son stole out of the house to spend his nights with his lover. Varchi survived to have other lovers.^[20]
• Hosokawa Takakuni and Yanagimoto Kenji
  • Takakuni, despite having sworn eternal love to Kenji, allowed Kenji's brother to be murdered. Later Kenji rose in vengeance against him with an army.
• Yanagimoto Kenji and Takahata Jinkuro
  • Knowing Kenji prepared a rebellion, Jinkuro vowed silence, but refused to break his allegiance to Lord Takakuni, warning Kenji that despite their love, he would not hesitate to kill him in battle.
• Nicholas Udall and Thomas Cheyney
  • Udall, headmaster at Eton College resigned in 1541 after confessing to having "committed buggery" with his pupil, for which he spent a short time in Marshalsea gaol.[8]
• Takeda Shingen and Kosaka Masanobu
  • In 1543 the 22-year-old future Daimyo sealed a written vow of love (still in existence) with his 16-year-old retainer, who served him as samurai in battle and page in peacetime. (Leupp, pp.53-54)

• Michelangelo and Cecchino de' Bracci
  • The artist composed fifty rhymed epitaphs for his friend, dead at sixteen in 1543. A few verses refer clearly to their shared physical joys.^[21]
• Pope Julius III and Cardinal Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte
  • The future pope hired the illiterate 14-year-old street urchin for his charms in 1547. Upon being appointed pope in 1550, he raised the boy to the post of cardinal and indulged in pederastic orgies with him and other young cardinals. (Larivière, 1997)
• Theodore Beza and Audebert
  • Among his 1548 Juvenilia poems was one which was understood to point to his bisexuality, in which he compared his passion for two young lovers, "little Candida" and "little Audebert," concluding he loved Audebert the best. Later this poem would be held against him in particular and against Calvinists in general as a proof of moral failing.[9], [10]
• Benvenuto Cellini and Fernando di Giovanni di Montepulciano
  • Ended after five years, in 1556, when Cellini, 56, had a falling out with his teen apprentice.
• Ashikaga Yoshiteru and Matsui Sadonokami
  • Sadonokami remained as the Shogun's lover until he reached adulthood, when he entered the service of the Hosokawa family, where his descendants can be found to the present day.
• Ashikaga Yoshiteru and Odachidono
  • The Jesuit Father Luis Frois writes of the 13-year-old page's seppuku upon the death of his lord, the Shogun in 1565.

• Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox and James I of England
  • Esmé Stewart became the first favourite of the future king of England, in 1579, when James was only thirteen years old. ^[22]
• Oda Nobunaga and Mori Ranmaru
  • Both perished in an ambush in 1582, Ranmaru, still in his teens, fighting by Oda's side.
• Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ii Manchiyo
  • One of many beloveds of the shogun, Manchiyo was a scion of an allied powerful clan. (Crompton, p.439)
• Anthony Bacon and Isaac Burgades
  • While living in Montauban, the elder brother of Francis Bacon was convicted of sodomy with a page who at the trial declared that "there was nothing wrong with sodomy" and that "Theodore Beza of Geneva approved of it."^[23]
• Prospero Farinacci and Berardino Rocchi
  • The Italian lawyer and judge, noted for his harsh sentencing of sodomites, was himself accused in 1595 of relations with Berardino Rocchi, a sixteen year old page.
• Toyotomi Hidetsugu and Fuwa Bansaku
  • Hidetsugu, regent to the emperor, ended up having to commit seppuku in 1595, joined by his beloved Fuwa Bansaku.
• Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Francesco ('Cecco') Boneri
  • The youthful Cecco modelled for many of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, including his 1602 Amor Vincit Omnia, and became a well-known artist himself, known as Cecco del Caravaggio.

• James I of England and Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset
  • The 41-year-old king fell in love with the 17-year-old ex-page at a 1606 jousting bout. Their love lasted several years, though as the boy matured the king was powerless to prevent Carr's “creeping back and withdrawing yourself from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary.”
• Charles de Luynes and Louis XIII of France
  • Counselor and friend to the Dauphin who was 23 years his junior, de Luynes was his lover from at least 1615, when the future Louis XIII - already experienced in male love - was 14.
• Sakabe Gozaemon and Tokugawa Iemitsu
  • The childhood friend and retainer, aged 21, was murdered by his 16-year-old beloved as they shared a bathtub, in 1620. (Crompton, p.439)

• Louis XIII, King of France, and the Marquis de Cinq-Mars
  • Cardinal Richelieu introduced the twelve-year-old marquis to his king in 1632, thinking the youth would be easy to control. Instead, the marquis tried to convince the king to have Richelieu executed. Cinq-Mars induced some French nobility into revolt, but the effort failed and Richelieu had him beheaded in 1642.^[24]
• Tokugawa Tsunayoshi and Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu
  • Yoshiyasu served the shogun, 12 years his senior, from ca. 1660 at an early age, and both played major roles in the incident of the 47 ronin of 1701.

• Jean-Baptiste Lully and Brunet
  • In 1685 the 53-year-old composer was denounced for his dalliances with his young page. The boy confessed to Roman orgies involving so many of the great lords that all was hushed up.
• Hans Hermann von Katte and Frederick II of Prussia
  • The 18-year-old crown prince Frederick wanted to escape from his brutal father in 1730. He asked his friend von Katte for help, but they didn't get very far. The king showed no mercy - he sentenced von Katte to death and forced his son to watch the execution.
• Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues and Hippolyte de Seytres
  • Both belonged to a French regiment that fought in Bohemia since 1740. Hippolyte, also an aristocrat, was 18 and Vauvenargue 8 years older when they became companions. The younger of the two died during the Siege of Prague in 1742. De Clapiers addressed his philosophical work Conseil à un jeune homme (Advice to a young Man) to Hippolyte de Seytres. "He understood all the passions and opinions, even the most singular, that the world blames." —Vauvenargues about his friend.
• William Thomas Beckford and William Courtenay
  • Beckford, 19, fell in love with Courtenay, 10, nicknamed Kitty and "one of the most beautiful boys in England," in 1789. Both pursued lifelong involvement with boys.

[edit] Nineteenth century

• Cheng I and Chang Pao (Cheung Po Tsai in Cantonese)
  • Cheng I was a pirate of the Chinese coast, who kidnapped the 15 years old Chang Pao in 1801. Chang Pao later became the leader of Cheng's pirate fleet.
• Lord Byron and Nicolò Giraud
  • Lord Byron fell in love with the French-Italian lad in 1810, when the boy was 15. ^[25] "It is about two hours since, that, after informing me he was most desirous to follow him (that is me) over the world, he concluded by telling me it was proper for us not only to live, but 'morire insieme'. The latter I hope to avoid - as much of the former as he pleases." —Byron in his letter to John Cam Hobhouse - The Convent, Athens, August 23rd, 1810
• Edward Fitzgerald and William Kenworthy Browne
  • While on a steamship crossing in 1832, Fitzgerald met the sixteen year old boy and fell in love with him. Their friendship continued until his friend's death in a riding accident in 1859. The poem Euphranor: A Dialogue on Youth was a glorification of Browne.
• Hail-Storm and Rabbit
  • Of the two Oglala Lakota he met in 1847, Parkman recounts, "Hail-Storm and [Rabbit] were inseparable: they ate, slept and hunted together, and shared with one another almost all that they possessed. If there be anything that deserves to be called romantic in the Indian character, it is to be sought for in friendships such as this, which are quite common among many of the prairie tribes." Hail-Storm was an older adolescent entering manhood, while Rabbit was still a boy. ^[26]
• William Johnson Cory and Charles Wood
  • William Johnson, master at Eton, wrote a book of Uranian verse, Ionica, dedicated to his pupil, in 1850.
• Charles John Vaughan and Alfred Pretor
  • Vaughn, headmaster at Harrow School, in 1851 was engaged in a long-standing love affair with Pretor, the head boy at the school, a youth known as "the house tart."^[27] Pretor boasted of the affair to his friend, John Addington Symonds. The latter eventually divulged matters to his father who blackmailed Vaughn into resigning. Pretor never forgave John his indiscretion.^[28]
• John Addington Symonds and Willie Dyer
  • The future writer fell in love at the University of Oxford in 1858 (age 17) with a fourteen year old choir boy. Their love affair lasted a year but apparently remained chaste, and was cut off on the intercession of Symonds' father.
• John C. Frémont and Jesse Shepard
  • The adventurer and politician took on the thirteen year old boy as his page, a role he filled for two years, until 1863. Jesse had been chosen because he was queer, and the two were constantly together.^[29]
• Russell Conwell and John Ring
  • During the American Civil War Conwell, a non-believer at the time, was attended by a sixteen year old aide de camp named Johnny Ring, a youth who shared his tent and was also charged with safeguarding the captain's saber and was devoutly Christian. The boy "idolized Conwell and was always with him," an affection which Conwell returned. On one occasion, Conwell being away from camp, the platoon was forced into a hasty retreat, setting fire to a bridge to block pursuit. Ring, attempting to save his captain's sword, crossed the burning bridge and enemy lines, retrieving the sword and crossing back through the flames, dying later of his burns. Upon hearing the news, Conwell lost consciousness and spent days in delirium of grief, converting later so as to be able to rejoin his friend after death. According to his own account, is is the memory of the love they shared that gave him the energy to accomplish his works in life.^[30]
• John Addington Symonds and Norman Moor
  • Symonds was introduced to the schoolboy in 1868 by a common friend, and for Norman's sake sought an appointment as teacher at his school, Clifton College.^[31]

• Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud
  • Both major poets, they became lovers in 1871, at 27 and 17 respectively. ^[32]
• Henry Morton Stanley and Kalalu
  • Stanley wrote a book about his love for the African boy, around 1870, "My Kalalu."
• Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher and Ernlé Johnson
  • Inspired by his teacher and close friend William Johnson Cory, Brett engages the fifteen year old Ernlé in a romantic but chaste mentorship of many years duration starting in 1874.^[33]
• Oscar Browning and George Curzon
  • After fifteen years a master at Eton College, OB, a former student of William Johnson-Cory,^[34] was dismissed in 1875 over his "overly amorous"^[35] (but purportedly chaste) relationship with the sixteen year old Curzon.^[36][37]
• Wilhelm von Gloeden and Pancrazio Bucini
  • Von Gloeden, a famous fin de siècle photographer of Italian youths, hired Bucini in the early 1880s, when the boy was 13 or 14. Bucini, called "il Moro," was his lover, assistant and finally his heir. In 1936 Bucini, as curator of the collection, successfully defended himself against the charge of keeping pornography, accusation made by the Italian fascists, who destroyed most of the remaining three thousand picture plates.
• Walt Whitman and Bill Duckett
  • They were together from 1884 to 1889

• Oscar Wilde and Robert Baldwin Ross
  • Ross, at 17 a journalist and future literary executor to Wilde, seduced his mentor, virginal and 32 in 1886. ^[38]
• Charles Kains Jackson and Cecil Castle
  • Jackson, active in the turn-of-the-century Uranian circles had the fourteen year old Castle as his boyfriend in 1888. The boy also posed nude for Henry Scott Tuke's The Bathers and for Frederick Rolfe's camera. (Rictor Norton on British pederastic art)
• Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Vladimir Lvovich Davïdov
  • The composer and his nephew (b. 1871) were lovers for five years, from c. 1888 until the elder's death at 53. (R. Norton's article on their relationship and the composer's forced suicide)
• Lord Arthur Somerset and Algernon Alleys
  • Somerset, an intimate of the Prince of Wales, fell in love with a London telegraph boy who moonlighted at at Charles Hammond's male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. He wrote the lad a number of incriminating letters, which, once revealed in the investigation of the Cleveland Street scandal, prompted his self-imposed exile on the continent in 1889.^[39]

• John Ellingham Brooks and Somerset Maugham
  • Brooks, an impoverished British pianist about twenty six at the time, had an affair in 1890 with the sixteen year old Maugham in Heidelberg, where the latter was at university. It was the boy's first sexual experience.^[40]
• Charles D. Williamson and Salvatore
  • Williamson, a former pupil of Johnson Cory and former beloved of Reginald Brett, took Catholic orders and moved to Italy, where in 1892 he developed a relationship with a fifteen year old youth whom he also appointed as houseboy. They were together for four years, until the boy's death.^[41]
• Lord Ronald Gower and Frank Hird
  • Gower, the model for Lord Henry Wotton in Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray, adopted the boy (no later than 1894) and lived with him in what became a life-long relationship.^[42] "Gower may be seen, but not Hird." —Oscar Wilde
• John Gambril Nicholson and William Alexander (Alec) Melling
  • One of the poet's boyish muses, Melling was the dedicatee of Nicholsen's collection of Uranian poems, A Chaplet of Southernwood, published in 1896.
• Norman Douglas and Michele
  • Douglas had an affair with the youth, 15, in Capri in 1897.

[edit] 20th and 21st centuries

• Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant
  • Despite Grant's alleged reply to his elder cousin's propositioning, Relations we may be: have them, we may not, the two, former childhood friends, became lovers in 1902 when Grant was a house guest of the Stracheys in London. He was seventeen and Strachey twenty two.^[43]
• Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen and Loulou Locré
  • Loulou was a pupil at the Lycée Carnot, involved with Fersen in 1903.^[44]
• Stefan George and Max Kronberger (Maximin)
  • A chaste love (one of many for George) which lasted one year, till the boy's death at 16 in 1904. George was then creating a cult that lifted Maximin to a godlike status. ^[45]
• St. John Lucas and Rupert Brooke^{[citation needed]}
  • Whilst at Rugby in 1904, the 16-year-old RB had a relationship with 25-year-old St. John Lucas, an author and aesthete who gave a great deal of encouragement to RB, and introduced him to the 1890's poets (Wilde, Dowson, etc.).
• Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen and Nino Cesarini
  • The baron, 24, met the 14 year old laborer in Rome, 1904. They lived in Capri till Fersen's 1923 suicide.

• Ferdinand Brooks and Jawaharlal Nehru
  • Before his enrollment in the Harrow School in 1905 the young Nehru had a relationship with Brooks, his Theosophist French teacher. ^[46]
• Frederick Rolfe and Ermenegildo Vianello
  • The writer, also known as "Baron Corvo" met the boy, a young gondolier of around seventeen years of age, in Venice in 1908 [11]
• T. E. Lawrence and Selim Ahmed (Dahoum)
  • For love of a Syrian boy of 15 met in 1912 at 24, Lawrence fought for Arab independence. "I liked a particular Arab very much, and I thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present." —T.E. Lawrence
• Philip Streatfeild and Noel Coward
  • Streatfeild, a 35 year old painter and member of the Uranian Society, took the 14 year old child actor in and introduced him to high society in 1913. Coward is thought to have modeled for his painting of nude boys on the beach.^[47][48]
• André Gide and Marc Allégret
  • Became lovers in 1916 when they were 47 and 15, remained friends for life. Allégret was the son of Elie Allégret, best man at Gide's 1895 wedding, and later became a renowned filmmaker. ^[49]
• E. M. Forster and Mohammed el-Adl
  • Forster met the 17 year old boy in Ramlah around 1917. Their love served as inspiration for much of the writer's later work.

• Jean Cocteau and Raymond Radiguet (contested)
  • Cocteau met the young poet in 1918 at 29, when the boy was 15 years old. The two collaborated extensively, socialized, and undertook many journeys and vacations together. Cocteau got the youth exempted from military service and exerted his influence to garner the "Nouveau Monde" literary prize for Radiguet's novel, Le Diable au Corps. Some sources suggest that their friendship was loving and sexual.^[50][51] Their relationship has been placed in the context of "a series of younger lovers and collaborators". [12] An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as "Monsieur Bébé") with decadence for his tryst with a model: "Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes." ("Baby is depraved. He likes women." [Note the use of the feminine adjective]). Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer "who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil," a salacious and phallic allusion.^[52][53] Cocteau however was guarded in his discussion of his relationships: "Cocteau never put his name to an openly, unashamedly homosexual text and invariably alluded to his male lovers - the most celebrated being the precocious novelist Raymond Radiguet and the actors Jean Marais and Edouard Dermit - as his 'adopted sons' (in the case of Dermit, even formally adopting him)".^[54] In 1919 Radiguet's father discovered a "compromising correspondence" between Cocteau and his son, giving rise to an exchange of letters in November of that year between the two adults in which Cocteau compared the youth to Rimbaud. In mid-March 1921 he hastened from Paris to join Radiguet (among others, including Georges Auric and Monsieur et Madame Hugo Valentin), who had left alone for Carqueiranne. On the 30th of the same month he replied to his mother, who had commented on this voyage: "Have you not yet understood that my life is spent releasing my instincts, watching them, sorting them once they are out, and forging them to my advantage?" After Radiguet's death (of typhoid fever), Cocteau did not attend the funeral. However, in this version of the story, Cocteau takes to his bed prostrated with grief (see below to see what happened according to Cocteau)^[55] After the death of Radiguet, Cocteau began to use opium, to which he became addicted. The people who wish to say that Cocteau and Radiguet had a relationship say that this was the direct result of Radiguet's death, but this reading of the story is contradicted by Cocteau himself (see below)[13]
  • Others contest this interpretation, claiming that it has not been confirmed in any correspondence or writings by Cocteau or those close to both of them, and that Radiguet had any number of well-documented liaisons with women and generally spent his nights alone at the apparments of Max Jacob and Juan Gris, sleeping on the kitchen table or the floor. Cocteau, speaking about Radiguet in a transcription of a television interview made three months before Cocteau's death claimed that he did not particularly care for Radiguet personally and only respected his talent as a writer. Upon Radiguet's death, which was due to typhoid fever complicated by heavy drinking, Cocteau was, in his own words, "paralyzed with stupor and disgust". He did not attend the funeral -- Cocteau did not attend anyone's funeral, as a rule -- but instead immediately left Paris with Sergei Diaghilev for Monte Carlo for a performance of Les Fâcheux by Auric and Les Biches by Poulenc. While Cocteau began to smoke opium after Radiguet's death, to which he became addicted, he himself said that this was pure coincidence and had nothing to do with Radiguet's death. ^[56]

• Karol Szymanowski and Boris Kochno
  • Szymanowski, 37, the foremost early 20th c. Polish composer, met Kochno, 15, a poet and dancer, in Elisavetgrad, 1919. The composer wrote four love poems to the boy, and also gave him a Russian translation of "Symposium," the central chapter of his legendary lost novel, Efebos.
• Sergei Diaghilev and Boris Kochno
  • Diaghilev's librettist for 8 years, till Sergei's death in 1929 at 57. Later, Monte Carlo ballet director.
• Willem de Mérode and Ekko Ubbens
  • One of de Mérode's chaste pederastic friendships.
• W.H. Auden and Michael Yates
  • In 1934 the poet took his former pupil, aged fifteen and by Auden's own account one of the five great loves of his life, on travels through Europe, and was inspired by him to write some of his tenderest love poems, such as Lullaby ("Lay your sleeping head, my love . . .")
• W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman
  • The two met in 1939 - Auden was 32, Kallman, 18, and while they were lovers only two years they remained life-long partners.
• Giovanni Comisso and Guido Bottegal
  • In 1943 the novelist Comisso (1895 - 1969) fell in love with the 16 years old Guido, who later was shot by partisans for being mistaken for a fascist spy.
• Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein and Lucien Trueb
  • Monty fell passionately in love the twelve-year-old Swiss youth in 1946, and would spend time with him at his chalet in Gstaad. The intimacy only went as far as bathing the boy and towelling him off. They corresponded for many years.[14][15]
• Michael Davidson and Maung Té-hung
  • In 1949 during his stay in Burma the British journalist took the youth as his companion. (From The World, The Flesh and Myself

• Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
  • Met in 1952, at 48 and 18, respectively.^[57]
• Sandro Penna and Raffaele
  • The Italian poet took the 14 years old streetboy from Rome to his home in 1956 and lived with him for several years.
• William S. Burroughs and Kiki
  • During the years in which William S. Burroughs was living in Tangier he had a relationship with a Spanish teenager named "Kiki".
• René Schérer and Guy Hocquenghem
  • Guy Hocquenghem began an affair with his teacher in 1959, when he was 15. The gay activist Hocquenghem and the philosopher Scherer remained lifelong friends.

• Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ninetto Davoli
  • The Italian poet, novelist and film director Pasolini started a relationship with the 15 year old Calabrian boy in 1963 and let him play many Comic roles in his movies. ^[58]
• Roger Peyrefitte and Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villele
  • Peyrefitte met the 14 year old aristocrat during the filming of his novel Les Amitiés particulières in late 1963. Their love is described in Notre amour and L'Enfant de cœur. Malagnac lived with him from the age of 16, was adopted by Peyrefitte, and eventually married Amanda Lear.
• Walter Breen and Glen Frendel
  • Breen, married, a numismatist and writer, was engaged in a relationship with Glen, then about fourteen, in 1964.
• Alexander Ziegler and Stephan (Mutscha)
  • In 1966 the twenty two year old Swiss actor and writer was sentenced to a two and a half year jail term for a love affair with the sixteen year old Stephan, documented in the autobiographical novel Die Konsequenz and later turned into a movie by director Wolfgang Petersen.
• Jan Hanlo and Mohammed
  • In 1969, when they were 57 and 12 - a chaste relationship, as were his others.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Sources

• Japanese couples documented in Watanabe and Iwata, 1989, passim, unless otherwise indicated.
• Chinese couples documented in Hinsch, 1990, p.37, 69.
• Source for Kochno: Hubert Kennedy in Paidika 1994, 3.3 p.28.

[edit] See also

• Friendship
• Homosexuality
• Pederasty
• Pederasty in ancient Greece
• Platonic love
• Shudo
• Sodomy

[edit] References

General

• Louis Crompton. Homosexuality and Civilization, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2003. ISBN 0-674-01197-X
• Michel Larivière. Homosexuels et bisexuels célèbres, Delétraz Editions, 1997. ISBN 2-911110-19-6

Ancient Greece

• Kenneth J. Dover. Greek Homosexuality, New York; Vintage Books, 1978. ISBN 0-394-74224-9
• Thomas K. Hubbard. Homosexuality in Greece and Rome, U. of California Press, 2003. [16] ISBN 0-520-23430-8
• Harald Patzer. Die Griechische Knabenliebe [Greek Pederasty], Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982. In: Sitzungsberichte der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Vol. 19 No. 1.
• Carola Reinsberg. Ehe, Hetärentum und Knabenliebe im antiken Griechenland, C.H.Beck Verlag, München 1993. ISBN 3-406-37374-7
• Eva Cantarella, Cormac O Cuilleanain. Bisexuality in the Ancient World , Yale University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-300-04844-0
• W. A. Percy III. Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece, University of Illinois Press, 1996. ISBN 0-252-02209-2

Muslim Lands

• Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, et al. Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature, New York: New York University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8147-7468-7
• J. Wright & Everett Rowson. Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature. 1998.
• 'Homosexuality' & other articles in the Encyclopædia Iranica

See also: Abu Nuwas, Hafez.

Japan

• Gary Leupp. Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-20900-1
• Tsuneo Watanabe & Jun'ichi Iwata. The Love of the Samurai. A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality, London: GMP Publishers, 1987. ISBN 0-85449-115-5

Pre-Modern Period

• Serge Bramly. Leonardo : The Artist and the Man, Penguin, 1994. ISBN 0-14-023175-7

Modern

• Marcel Moré. Le très curieux Jules Verne : Le problème du père dans les Voyages extraordinaires, Gallimard, 2005. ISBN 2-07-077367-1
• Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006), a 500-page scholarly volume that considers the major Victorian pederastic writers and their relationships (the author has made this volume available in a free, open-access, PDF version).

[edit] External links

• World history of homosexual and pederastic relationships