Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (38 page)

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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Page 137
in the trappings of medievalism and in the career of the young poet Bliss Carman. He continued to see Theodore Dwight until the winter of 1893-94, when Dwight suddenly and mysteriously left the Boston Public Library because of "poor health," languished for a while at home, and then, to the surprise of nearly everyone, married a sympathetic woman with whom he left for a honeymoon in Europe.
14
After moving into the "Bungalow," Stoddard did less traveling. Household expenses consumed most of his salary, and, besides, he now had Kenneth for company during vacations. During the summer of 1897, he did go to Nahant as the guest of Henry Cabot Lodge, and he also stopped in New Jersey to visit the retired actress Lotta Crabtree. But Stoddard generally stayed in Washington, where he would sometimes take the Kid to call on wealthy friends. "My Ken has always had an ambition to see something of Washington society," Stoddard wrote to Father Hudson, and this ambition was gratified in the salons of Mrs. Burnett and the Storers. "With the little experience he has had," Stoddard proudly reported, ''his ease and self-possession are remarkable."
15
By the mid-1890s, a great variety of people were leaving their calling cards at 300 M Street. There were newspaper reporters, actors and artists, former students, deposed Hawaiian royalty, famous Catholics, aspiring young writers, friends of friends with notes of introduction. If he was in the right mood, Stoddard "received" with a certain theatrical flair. After presenting their cards to Jules, visitors would be escorted into the reception room to find their host enthroned in his Calcutta chair, often wearing one of his Hawaiian kimonos. Three men who called at the "Bungalow" during these years are of particular interest.
Although he was only in his thirties, Hamlin Garland knew as many literary personalities as Stoddard, to whom he brought a note of introduction from Howells. Since his brother was an actor, Garland also knew about show business, which was one of Stoddard's favorite topics of conversation. Garland gave his "electrical grip" (said to bring good luck) to Stoddard, who found his guest to be "like a breeze from the Prairies."
16
Best of all, Garland was an appreciative audience, and Stoddard, forgetting his aches and worries, his eyes brightening and his voice deepening, became dramatic. He acted out the story of an impaled fly and some ants to the rich satisfaction of them both. When asked to autograph his latest book, Garland had the grace to write: "To Chas. Warren Stoddard, who has the courage of his artistic perceptions."
17
 
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If Garland was sympathetic, the poet Bliss Carman was
simpatico.
A tall, thin Canadian, whose unconventional appearance Stoddard found wonderfully picturesque, Carman wore his hair long and favored full flowing cravats, heavy tweeds, sandals, and jewelry. Carman's public persona was that of a footloose Bohemian who had fallen in love with the Open Roadan image created by his two books of poems,
Songs of Vagabondia
(1894) and
More Songs from Vagabondia
(1896), which he had written with his Harvard friend, Richard Hovey. Carman was truly a vagabond only in the sense that he wished to escape the restraints of society, a desire with which Stoddard could always identify himself. In addition, Carman apparently shared Stoddard's appreciation of good-looking young men, although this part of his personality was generally masked during his lifetime and denied after his death. In any case, Carman often visited the "Bungalow" during these years, and the poet looked up to Stoddard as a "Vagabondus" of the older generation, someone whose "unfailing friendship through beautiful Washington days" he would always remember with love.
In a book that he presented to Stoddard, Rudyard Kipling wrote, "Men's insides is made so Comical, God help 'em."
18
This was an apt inscription for a man whose peculiar psychological "imbalance" was a source of mild amusement to many of his more conventional friends. But Kipling too had his intense devotion to young men, such as the late Wolcott Balestier, the American writer and publisher, whose sister he had recently married. In London during the early 1890s, Kipling and Balestier had become more than just "jolly friends"; they had loved each other ''almost at first sight," according to Leon Edel.
19
"Perhaps there never was a more beautiful fellowship than theirs," Stoddard wrote, "or a sadder one."
20
Kipling seemed attracted to athletic and manly chaps, whether they were British "hearties" in the barracks or American adventurers in the Wild West. In Stoddard he found a Westerner different from the type he had admired in reading Bret Harte and Mark Twain, but they nevertheless became "the best of friends."
During an 1895 visit to "Naulakha," Kipling's country estate in Vermont, Stoddard received some good advice about his San Francisco novel. Its working title then was
So Pleased to Have Met You,
which Kipling convinced him to change to
For the Pleasure of His Company.
In fact, Kipling urged him to change the whole novel, which he thought was a "rummy, queer, original, fascinating" story that needed a "closerknit" shape.
21
Over the next few years, Kipling took a proprietary
 
Page 139
interest in the novel, exhorting Stoddard to send him revised chapters on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, the
Ave Maria
continued to publish Stoddard's articles, and Father Hudson managed to get two of his books into print: a new edition of
The Lepers of Molokai
in 1893, and, three years later, Stoddard's life of his beloved Saint Anthony,
The Wonder Worker of Padua.
But Stoddard gained neither money nor national attention from these books. They were advertised only in Catholic periodicals and available only in Catholic bookstores. Nor did he profit when, in 1894, a disreputable Chicago firm published a cheap paperback edition of
Hawaiian Life, Being Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes.
His other late books, which were based primarily on old material from the magazines, reinforced the impression that Stoddard was merely a chronicler of bygone days.
A Cruise under the Crescent
(1898) recalled his trip to Egypt and the Holy Land.
Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska
(1899) was based on the summer he spent in the Northwest during his unhappy Notre Dame period.
In the Footprints of the Padres
(1902) contained youthful memories of colorful spots in Northern California.
Exits and Entrances
(1903) interwove personality sketches (of Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and Robert Louis Stevenson) with picturesque travelogue.
A Troubled Heart was
republished in 1900, with Stoddard's name on the title page. None of these books sold very well, but publication did give Stoddard some personal satisfaction. He felt that his life had been interesting; and although he conceded that "the half has not been told" in his writings, he was content to share the part that could be told with the readers of America.
III
If his literary career was not bringing him everything he might have wished, Stoddard's position in society provided him with a constant round of pleasant experiences. In Washington, he continued to see much of Henry Adams, and he started visiting back and forth with the unfortunate ex-Queen of Hawaii, Lillilukalani. When Mrs. Burnett was in town, she and Stoddard shared gossip. He became reacquainted with old California friends: Fanny Stevenson, now a widow; Belle Strong, now a "grass widow"; and Joaquin Miller, as much of a humbug as ever. Invitations to visit came from friends up and down the East Coast. Stoddard spent some time with Father Joe Kirlin in Philadelphia,
 
Page 140
where he met an interesting art student named Ned McGeorge. Another new friend from Philadelphia was DeWitt Miller, a middle-aged lyceum lecturer, who collected books and young men. As usual, Stoddard gravitated to Massachusetts, where his hosts included the Theodore Dwights at Kendal Green, the Henry Cabot Lodges at East Point on Nahant, and the architect-poet Edgar Newcombe at North Scituate.
It was during these years that Stoddard was introduced to Nantucket and Tuckernuck, two islands south of Cape Cod. While he found Nantucket charming, he fell in love with Tuckernuck, which seemed the closest thing to paradise he had ever seen in America. "Tuckanuck," a rambling house that dominated the sparsely populated island, belonged to William Sturgis Bigelow, the rich Bostonian eccentric who had given up medicine to dabble in Buddhism. Only the "elect"and only menwere invited to Bigelow's estate, which Russell Sullivan recalled as sitting "on a high bluff, or sand dune, overlooking the water, with meadowland stretching inward to the south. The Gulf Stream, making in here, gives this place a mild climate of its own, to which the pleasant, traditional
dolce far niente
life conforms. As there are only male servants, pajamas, or less, are the only wear.''
22
As Stoddard remembered, it was usually "or less."
Outdoors, Bigelow encouraged his guests to do as they pleased, whether golf, tennis, tetherball, or swimming. Inside the house, with its smart, all-white sleeping rooms upstairs and a lovely veranda for alfresco dining, Bigelow provided the last word in luxury. There was a sunken Japanese bathtub with a firebox under it, and in the white washroom "a row of white china wash bowls, one for each guest, set at a convenient height for shaving, and a little shelf above with a row of soap dishes containing Pears' soap, also bottles of Pears' Lavender Water, French shampoos and other lotions and shaving creams."
23
Stoddard was so fascinated with "Tuckanuck" that he wrote a series of four articles about it for the
Ave Maria,
in which he took care to gloss over the pagan and homoerotic aspects and to stress the unearthly beauty of the setting.
24
Stoddard would also cast his eyes upon the beautifully bronzed physique of a young man whose presence added immeasurably to the enchantment of "Tuckanuck." This was George Cabot Lodgeor "Bay," as he was calledthe son of Senator Lodge, who worked in his father's office by day and wrote poetry by night, and who was considered to be extraordinary by nearly everyone who knew him. Edith Wharton, for
 
Page 141
one, recalled that "he lived every moment to the full, and the first impression he made was of a joyous physical life. His sweet smile, his easy strength, his deep eyes full of laughter and visions,these struck one even before his look of intellectual power."
25
A British diplomat remembered "the immense joy [Bay] had in jumping into the water, and then lying out in the sun till he was all brownedas strong and healthy a creature as I have ever seen, and exulting in his life."
26
At "Tuckanuck," Lodge's first loyalty was to Bigelow (whose influence over him Mrs. Wharton deplored). But he also had time for Stoddard, who shared with him (albeit somewhat vicariously) a delight in playing the role of a naked savage.
Walt Whitman's poetry provided another bond between the two men, despite the fact that Lodge was more interested in the rhythms of
Leaves of Grass
than in its celebration of comradely love. When Lodge tried writing Whitmanesque verse of his own, Stoddard was happy to offer advice, but he did not really understand "Bay" 's literary philosophy, "Conservative Christian Anarchism." Perhaps he never quite understood Lodge himself, but he certainly loved the young poet and told him so.
In 1903, for instance, Stoddard wrote a rambling letter to Bay, pouring out his heart and expressing fears about his health, his writing, and his future. "I wonder why I write all this today," he concluded. "Perhaps it's because I happen to be deuced blueyet why I know not, unless it's because I love you and would be so glad to see you."
27
Stoddard never had the audacity to claim Bay as one of his "Kids"; there was something majestical about George Cabot Lodge that set him above all the Kenneth O'Connors of the world. But Bay was most certainly his special friend.
The other young poet whose friendship meant a great deal to Stoddard was Yone Noguchi, who had been born in Japan in 1875. About the same age, Noguchi and Lodge were otherwise complete opposites, at least as Stoddard viewed them. While Bay was placed on a pedestal and admired for his rock-hard manliness, Yone seemed as delicate and moody and vulnerable as Stoddard himself. In 1897, Noguchi had started sending letters from "The Hights," Joaquin Miller's residence near Oakland. It was the "Poet of the Sierras" who had commended Stoddard to Noguchi, and the young Japanese, struggling to establish himself as a writer in the Bay Area, became interested in Miller's picturesque friend. In 1900, he paid him a call at the "Bungalow."
 
Page 142
Although disappointed that Yone was not wearing a kimono, Stoddard found him to be "sweet, serious, often sadsometimes in tears, he knows not why. We are sympathetic to the last degree" (D 27 Sept. 1900). Yone, in fact, sometimes slept with Stoddard, according to an article he wrote about the "Bungalow" for the
National Magazine.
In doing so, however, he was trying mainly to comfort his sighing, sad-eyed host: "How he hates to be constrained! He wishes to be perfectly free. After all, he is nothing but a spoiled child. 'I am even a baby,' he will proclaim off-hand."
28
In 1903, Noguchi went off to London to win fame with
From the Eastern Sea,
a book of poems dedicated to Stoddard. Later he was to talk of marrying their mutual friend, the young reporter Ethel Armes. Stoddard opposed this marriage vociferously. In his heart of hearts, he wanted to keep Yone as one of his "Kids," one who would somehow never grow into sober, preoccupied manhood and thus out of his reach. He seemed to feel the same way about Bay Lodge, who married in 1900, but to whom Stoddard continued to cling with nearly pathetic desperation. Even Kenneth O'Connor had begun to slip away from Stoddard, who was forced to stand by helplessly and watch the disintegration of their "ideal" home life.
IV
Anyone could have predicted that Stoddard's relationship with Kenneth would change as the Kid developed a need for adult independence. But Stoddard wished to possess and protect Kenneth as if he were the Kid's lover, big brother, and mother rolled into one. Kenneth had never been all that dependent on his new "Dad." During the early "Bungalow" years, the young man relied on Stoddard for money, but he never forgot he had a family home to which he could always return. Not a gerontophile, the Kid must have tired of this fat old man's love of cuddling. The Spanish-American War gave Kenneth a chance to escape such smothering affection, and later it gave Stoddard something to blame for all of the deplorable "changes" in his Kid.
Stoddard's reaction to Kenneth's enlistment illustrates how essential the Kid had become to him during their three years together. "Ken is begging leave to enlist," Stoddard wrote Father Hudson in April 1898. "I would not object did I not fear that the worry would drive me mad."
29
Stoddard no doubt did object, but Kenneth enlisted anyway. With other

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