to solicit a donation for Ina Coolbrith, whose home had been destroyed in the earthquake; and he also commented on the London episode in the
Autobiography:
"I feel as if I were almost famous. Everybody wants to shake hands with me and it is becoming a little embarrassing. I thank you for what you have written, dear Mark. All the past comes back to me touched with a vein of sadness." To Benton Gifford, the young man who had nearly become his "Kid" in Monterey, he wrote of his loneliness: "I need a Kid right by me and someone who would be sure to be here at night when I am most lonely."
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The plaint common to many of Stoddard's letters was his need for comfort and consolation, but he sometimes reciprocated. He did his best to cheer Ethel Armes, whom Yone Noguchi had jilted in favor of the dreadful woman who had borne his child. "Do nothing rash," Stoddard wrote to another young friend, who was perhaps thinking of suicide. "There is so much to live for if you only take life in the right spirit." When a Bostonian wrote to say that his "inseparable companion" of eleven years, Ned, was engaged to be married, Stoddard replied: ''Shall I go into mourning for our dearest Ned? I could very easily. Yes, I know what it means . . . I've had it torn up by the roots and God! How it hurt; then I began to grow numb, and so, finally, I became indifferent."
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As always, Stoddard continued to "beguile the hours" by reading; and since he stayed home more often now, books became more and more important as a substitute, however inade
q
uate, for human companionship. His taste in books was as catholic as his taste in friends: a week's reading in Monterey might include the latest Jack London novel, a California history, a collection of short stories by H. C. Bunner, something by Mary Austin, and an adventure tale for boys, such as
Sky Pilot.
The books sent to him by DeWitt Miller were of special interest because they allowed him to see how others in his situation had coped with life. Thanks to Miller, Stoddard was able to read Th
e Satyricon
of Petronius Arbiter, a lesbian novel by Mary MacLane, and several books about Oscar Wilde's life and trial. In January 1907, Stoddard asked Miller to send him Adolf Wilbrandt's
Fridolin's Mystical Marriage,
the story of a bisexual German professor who finds love in the arms of a handsome young man. "It is a book that appeals to me strongly," Stoddard later wrote, "and I like to look into it once in a while."
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Of all such books that came into his hands during these years, the one that argued most movingly for love between males was a novel called
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