John Addington Symonds was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

 (homosexuality), which he believed could include pederastic

Pederasty

Pederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...

 as well as egalitarian

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible). A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. He also wrote much poetry inspired by his homosexual affairs.

Early life

John Symonds was born at Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, England in 1840. His father, the senior John Addington Symonds, MD (1807–1871), was the author of Criminal Responsibility (1869), The Principles of Beauty (1857) and Sleep and Dreams (2nd ed., 1857). Considered delicate, the younger Symonds did not take part in games after age 14 at Harrow School

Harrow School

Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...

, and he showed no particular promise as a scholar.

In January 1858 Symonds received a letter from his friend Alfred Pretor (1840–1908), telling of Pretor's affair with their headmaster, Charles John Vaughan

Charles John Vaughan

Charles John Vaughan , was an English scholar and churchman.He was educated at Rugby School and Cambridge, where he was bracketed senior classic with Lord Lyttelton in 1838. In 1839 he was elected fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and for a short time studied law. He took orders in 1841, and...

. Symonds was shocked and disgusted, feelings complicated by his growing awareness of his own homosexuality. He did not mention the incident for more than a year until, in 1859 and a student at Oxford University, he told the story to John Conington

John Conington

John Conington was an English classical scholar.He was born at Boston in Lincolnshire, and is said to have learned the alphabet at fourteen months, and to have been reading well at three and a half...

, the Latin professor. Conington approved of romantic relationships between men and boys. He had earlier given Symonds a copy of Ionica, a collection of homoerotic verse by William Johnson Cory

William Johnson Cory

William Johnson Cory , born William Johnson, was an educator and poet, born at Torrington, and educated at Eton, where he was afterwards a renowned master, nicknamed Tute by his pupils...

, the influential Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 master and advocate of pederastic pedagogy. Conington encouraged Symonds to tell his father about his friend's affair, and the senior Symonds forced Vaughan to resign from Harrow. Pretor was angered by the younger man's part and never spoke to Symonds again.

In the fall of 1858, Symonds went to Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

 as a commoner

Commoner

In British law, a commoner is someone who is neither the Sovereign nor a peer. Therefore, any member of the Royal Family who is not a peer, such as Prince Harry of Wales or Anne, Princess Royal, is a commoner, as is any member of a peer's family, including someone who holds only a courtesy title,...

 but was elected to an exhibition in the following year. In spring of that same year, he fell in love with Willie Dyer (William Fear Dyer 1843-1905), a Bristol choirboy three years younger. They engaged in a chaste love affair that lasted a year, until broken up by the senior Symonds. The friendship continued for several years afterward, until at least 1864. Dyer became organist and choirmaster of St Nicholas' Church, Bristol.

At Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, Symonds became engaged in his studies and began to demonstrate his academic ability. In 1860 he took a first in Mods

Honour Moderations

Honour Moderations are a first set of examinations at Oxford University in England during the first part of the degree course for some courses ....

 and won the Newdigate prize

Newdigate prize

Sir Roger Newdigate's Prize is awarded to students of the University of Oxford for Best Composition in English verse by an undergraduate who has been admitted to Oxford within the previous four years. It was founded by Sir Roger Newdigate, Bt in the 18th century...

 with a poem on "The Escorial"; in 1862 he obtained a first in Literae Humaniores

Literae Humaniores

Literae Humaniores is the name given to an undergraduate course focused on Classics at Oxford and some other universities.The Latin name means literally "more humane letters", but is perhaps better rendered as "Advanced Studies", since humaniores has the sense of "more refined" or "more learned",...

, and in 1863 won the Chancellor's English Essay.

In 1862 Symonds was elected to an open fellowship at the conservative Magdalen

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

. He made friends with a C.G.H. Shorting, whom he took as a private pupil. When Symonds refused to help Shorting gain admission to Magdalen, the younger man wrote to school officials alleging "that I [Symonds] had supported him in his pursuit of the chorister Walter Thomas Goolden (1848-1901), that I shared his habits and was bent on the same path." Although Symonds was officially cleared of any wrongdoing, he suffered a breakdown from the stress and shortly thereafter the university for Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

Personal life

There he met Janet Catherine North (sister of botanical artist Marianne North

Marianne North

Marianne North was an English naturalist and botanical artist-Life with her parents:Marianne North was born at Hastings, the eldest daughter of a prosperous land-owning family descended from the Hon. Roger North, younger son of Dudley North, 4th Baron North...

, 1830-1890). They married at Hastings

Hastings

Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....

 on 10 November 1864. They settled in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and had four daughters: Janet (born 1865), Charlotte (born 1867), Margaret (born 1869) and Katharine (born 1875). (She was later honored for her writing as Dame Katharine Furse

Katharine Furse

Dame Katharine Furse, GBE, RRC , founder of the English Voluntary Aid Detachment force, was born Katharine Symonds, daughter of the poet and critic John Addington Symonds and Janet Catherine North...

.)

While in Clifton in 1868, Symonds met and fell in love with Norman Moor, a youth about to go up to Oxford, who became his pupil. Their affair, erotic and sensual but kept short of coitus, lasted four years. According to Symonds' diary of 28 January 1870, "I stripped him naked and fed sight, touch and mouth on these things." The relationship occupied a good part of his time. (On one occasion he left his family and travelled to Italy and Switzerland with Moor.) It also inspired his most productive period of writing poetry, published in 1880 as New and Old: A Volume of Verse.

Career

Symonds intended to study law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

, but his health again broke down and forced him to travel. Returning to Clifton, he lectured there, both at the college and ladies' schools. From his lectures, he prepared the essays in his Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872) and Studies of the Greek Poets (1873–1876).

Meanwhile he was occupied with his major work, Renaissance in Italy, which appeared in seven volumes at intervals between 1875 and 1886. Since his prize essay on the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 at Oxford, Symonds had wanted to study it further and emphasize the reawakening of art and literature in Europe. His work was interrupted by serious illness. In 1877 his life was in danger. His recovery at Davos-Platz

Davos-Platz

Davos Platz is part of the village of Davos, situated in eastern Switzerland at 5,105 ft. above sea-level, in a valley of the East Grisons....

 led him to believe this was the only place where he was likely to enjoy life.

He practically made his home at Davos and wrote about it in Our Life in the Swiss Highlands (1891). Symonds became a citizen of the town; he took part in its municipal business, made friends with the peasants and shared their interests. There he wrote most of his books: biographies of Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

 (1878), Philip Sidney

Philip Sidney

Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...

 (1886), Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

 (1886) and Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

 (1893), several volumes of poetry and essays, and a translation of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini

Benvenuto Cellini was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.-Youth:...

 (1887).

There, too, he completed his study of the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, the work for which he is chiefly remembered. He was feverishly active throughout his life. Considering his poor health, his productivity was remarkable. Two works, a volume of essays, In the Key of Blue, and a monograph on Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

, were published in the year of his death. His activity was unbroken to the last.

He had a passion for Italy and for many years resided during the autumn in the house of his friend, Horatio F Brown, on the Zattere, in Venice. He died in Rome and was buried close to the grave of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

.

After death

Symonds left his papers and his autobiography in the hands of Brown, who wrote an expurgated biography in 1895, which Edmund Gosse

Edmund Gosse

Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...

 further stripped of homoerotic content before publication. In 1926, upon coming into the possession of Symonds' papers, Gosse burned everything except the memoirs, to the dismay of Symonds' granddaughter.

Symonds was morbidly introspective, but with a capacity for action. In the Opalstein of Talks and Talkers, the contemporary writer Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

 described him as "the best of talkers, singing the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as to the light guitar." Beneath his good fellowship, he was a melancholic.

This side of his nature is revealed in his gnomic poetry

Gnomic poetry

Gnomic poetry consists of sententious maxims put into verse to aid the memory. They were known by the Greeks as gnomes, from the Greek word for "an opinion".A gnome was defined by the Elizabethan critic Henry Peacham as...

, and particularly in the sonnet

Sonnet

A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

s of his Animi Figura (1882). He portrayed his own character with great subtlety. His poetry is perhaps rather that of the student than of the inspired singer, but it has moments of deep thought and emotion.

It is, indeed, in passages and extracts that Symonds appears at his best. Rich in description, full of "purple patches," his work lacks the harmony and unity essential to the conduct of philosophical argument. His translations are among the finest in the language; here his subject was found for him, and he was able to lavish on it the wealth of colour and quick sympathy which were his characteristics.

Homosexuality and homosexual writings

While the taboos of Victorian England prevented Symonds from speaking openly about homosexuality, his works published for a general audience contained strong implications and some of the first direct references to male-male sexual love in English literature. For example, in "The Meeting of David and Jonathan

David and Jonathan

David and Jonathan were heroic figures of the Kingdom of Israel, whose covenant was recorded favourably in the books of Samuel. Jonathan was the son of Saul, king of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, and David was the son of Jesse of Bethlehem and Jonathan's presumed rival for the crown...

", from 1878, Jonathan takes David "In his arms of strength / [and] in that kiss / Soul into soul was knit and bliss to bliss".

The same year, his translations of Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

's sonnets to the painter's beloved Tommaso Cavalieri restore the male pronouns which had been made female by previous editors. By the end of his life, Symonds' homosexuality had become an open secret in Victorian literary and cultural circles.

Simultaneously to these widely available works, Symonds was writing, privately publishing and distributing more candid writings about homosexuality. As well as a large number of poems written throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Symonds wrote one of the first essays in defense of homosexuality in the English language, A Problem in Greek Ethics, in 1883. A follow-up essay from 1891, A Problem in Modern Ethics, includes proposals for reforming anti-homosexual legislation.

These essays were widely read by an underground of homosexual writers and continued to be secretly published and distributed decades after his death. Some of his other personal writings and letters were finally published in the late twentieth century, and are of great interest to historians for the candid descriptions of an "unspeakable" sexual culture which existed against the "social law" of his time that "regarded this love as abominable and unnatural."

In particular, Symonds' memoirs, written over a four year period, from 1889 to 1893, form the earliest known self-conscious homosexual autobiography. In addition to realizing his own homosexuality, Symonds' daughter, Madge Vaughan, was probably writer Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

's first same-sex crush, though there is no evidence that the feeling was mutual. Woolf was the cousin of her husband William Wyamar Vaughan

William Wyamar Vaughan

William Wyamar Vaughan was a British educationalist.Vaughan was the son of Sir Henry Halford Vaughan, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. In 1898 he married Margaret Symmonds, daughter of John Addington Symonds; they had two sons and a daughter. Their daughter was noted physiologist,...

. Another daughter, Charlotte Symonds, married the classicist Walter Leaf

Walter Leaf

Walter Leaf was an English banker and scholar.Walter Leaf was born at on 26 November 1852 and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1877 he entered the family firm, becoming in 1888 chairman of Leaf & Company Ltd. Later he became chairman of the Westminster Bank...

. Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

 used some details of Symonds' life, especially the relationship between him and his wife, as the starting-point for the short story The Author of Beltraffio

The Author of Beltraffio

The Author of Beltraffio is a short story by Henry James, first published in the English Illustrated Magazine in 1884. This macabre account of desperate family infighting eventually leads to a tragic conclusion...

 (1884).

Over a century after Symonds' death his first work on homosexuality Soldier Love and Related Matter was finally published by Andrew Dakyns (grandson of Symonds' associate, Henry Graham Dakyns

Henry Graham Dakyns

Henry Graham Dakyns was a translator of ancient Greek. He is known for his translations of Xenophon's Cyropaedia and Hellenica, The Economist, Hiero, On Horsemanship. His name sometimes appears in print as H.G. Dakyns. Dakyns was a tutor for Lord Alfred Tennyson's children...

), Eastbourne, E. Sussex, England 2007. Soldier Love, or Soldatenliebe since it was limited to a German edition. Symonds' English text is lost. This translation and edition by Dakyns is the only version ever to appear in the author's own language.

List of works

• The Renaissance. An Essay (1863)
• Miscellanies by John Addington Symonds, M.D.,: Selected and Edited with an Introductory Memoir, by His Son (1871)
• Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872)
• Renaissance in Italy, 7 vol. (1875–86)
• Shelley (1878)
• Animi Figura (1882)
• A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883)
• Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1887) An English translation.
• A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891)
• Our Life in the Swiss Highlands (1891)
• In the Key of Blue (1893)
• Walt Whitman. A Study (1893)

Further reading

• Phyllis Grosskurth
  Phyllis Grosskurth
  Phyllis M. Grosskurth, is a Canadian biographer.Born in Toronto, Ontario, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree, honours English from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Ottawa...
  
  , John Addington Symonds: A Biography (1964)
• Phyllis Grosskurth
  Phyllis Grosskurth
  Phyllis M. Grosskurth, is a Canadian biographer.Born in Toronto, Ontario, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree, honours English from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Ottawa...
  
  (ed.), The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds Hutchinson (1984)

External links

• LibriVox audiorecording of A Problem in Modern Ethics by John Addington Symonds, read by Martin Geeson: http://www.archive.org/details/problem_modern_ethics_1106_librivox
• John Addington Symonds papers, University of Bristol Library Special Collections
• Symonds's translation of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Vol. 1, Posner LIbrary, Carnegie Mellon University Vol. 2, Carnegie Mellon University
• John Addington Symonds, Waste: a lecture delivered at the Bristol institution for the advancement of science, literature..., 1863
• John Addington Symonds, The Principles of Beauty, 1857
• John Addington Symonds, The Renaissance, an essay, 1863
• Biography, GLBTQ encyclopedia
• 1998 Symonds International Symposium
• Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde (2006)
• Robert Peters' MSS, Indiana University
• Psychoanalytic Quarterly
• Rictor Norton, "The Life and Writings of John Addington Symonds (1840—1893)"