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Lynn Riggs

April 20, 2018, 11:07 pm
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Born on a farm outside Claremore, Oklahoma, gay poet and playwright Rollie Lynn Riggs (1899-1954) had once worked as a day laborer, a movie cowboy, a reporter, a Hollywood screenwriter, a proofreader at the Wall Street Journal and a school teacher in Chicago. His father was a cattleman turned bank president, and his mother was 1/8th Cherokee. Lynn grew up during Oklahoma’s territorial days.
 
His first poem was published in 1919 in the Los Angeles Times, where he was working as a proof reader. Before relocating to NYC in 1926, he had worked on a chicken ranch, in a glass factory, and had sung in a Chautauqua quintet. Now he was setting his sights on Broadway.

In 1928 he went to Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship, arriving in Paris to work on a new play. Settling in at the famed Les Deux Magots café, Lynn Riggs wrote about life on the Oklahoma Indian territory, relating the loneliness, isolation and violent emotions of life on the frontier before Oklahoma became a state. Many of the characters were based on his own family and friends. As work progressed, he relocated to a $2-a-night rented room in Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera west of Nice. He titled his play Green Grow the Lilacs, after a nineteenth-century folk song, and it became the source material for the 1943 landmark Broadway musical Oklahoma!, the first ever collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. 

The first production of Green Grow the Lilacs was a 1931 presentation by the Theatre Guild in NYC, and the cast included Lee Strasberg and a troupe of real cowboys from a rodeo that had just closed at Madison Square Garden. While Rodgers and Hammerstein began crafting their musical version of Riggs’s play in 1942, Lynn was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving his country at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. He did not know that Hammerstein was frequently lifting melodious dialogue from his play verbatim for use as lyrics for the musical’s songs.

Some of Lynn’s postwar scripts achieved success in NYC, where he lived out his days with a series of male companions. Riggs was described as a slight man with fine brown hair and gentle manners. While living in Los Angeles he became a confidant of both Betty Davis and Joan Crawford, functioning as their frequent public escort. In an affectionate gesture Crawford presented him with a Scottish terrier he named The Baron.

Riggs died in NYC of stomach cancer in 1954 at age 54, but his body was returned to his hometown of Claremore, Oklahoma, for interment. A park in Claremore is named in his honor, and a museum in the same town displays photographs that chronicle his lifetime. Also on display are artifacts from the film version of Oklahoma!, including the “Surry with the Fringe on Top” and Laurey’s honeymoon dress. 918.342.1127.

Sources:
Something Wonderful by Todd Purdum (2018)
Thomas Erhard, Oklahoma Historical Society (2009)
A Handbook of Oklahoma Writers by Mary Hays Marable and Elaine Boylan (1939)
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Siegfried Wagner's Homosexual Circle

May 21, 2018, 9:04 pm
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Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930), son of the great German opera composer Richard Wagner (father and son in photo at right), displayed a feminine demeanor while growing up and was greatly attached to his mother. During his student days he often dressed up as a ballerina, and he had affairs with several of his fellow male students.

Siegfried, who was also the grandson of pianist/composer Franz Liszt, became part of a circle of high-profile closeted homosexual men, including English composer Clement Harris, tenor Max Lorenz, writer Oscar Wilde, illustrator Franz Stassen and Prince Philipp of Eulenburg. In 1892 Clement Harris and 23-year-old Siegfried set off on an around-the-world tour together, and the two fell deeply in love. Wagner kept a portrait of Harris on his desk for the rest of his life.

When journalist Maximilian Harden later accused Prince Philipp of Eulenburg and others close to Kaiser Wilhelm II of homosexuality (Harden-Eulenburg Affair), Siegfried either had to get married or be exposed for what he was. So it was that in 1915 at the age of 46, after strong prodding from his mother, Siegfried Wagner married an 18-year-old Englishwoman named Winifred Klindworth, with whom he had four children, thus providing heirs for the continuation of the Wagner dynasty. His sexual orientation, however, became the source of both scandal and concerted attempts to erase it from the history of the Wagner family.


Siegfried Wagner in his twenties (left).





When the Wagner dynasty’s papers were bequeathed to Bayreuth’s Richard Wagner Foundation in 1973, Winifred Wagner included Siegfried’s musical scores but withheld her husband's correspondence. This was consistent with the family’s notorious stalling and purging of any revelations that would taint the legacy of Richard Wagner.


In response to Harden’s insinuations about his sexual nature, Siegfried replied, “There was ugly gossip about Frederick the Great, too, the greatest king of all time – and he made Prussia great and strong! So don't worry. I won't defile the House of the Festival.” The irony in that statement is that all the rumors and gossip about Frederick the Great were true.

Siegfried did not give up social and sexual relations with homosexuals, however, and he and Franz Stassen (1869-1949), a gay artist who had served as the best man at Siegfried’s wedding, continued a social and artistic relationship that lasted for decades. Stassen (at left) was a noted Art Nouveau painter and illustrator who also married. Siegfried introduced Stassen to Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz (1901-1975), much admired by Hitler, even though Lorenz was a gay man married to a Jewish woman. For a time Stassen and Lorenz were involved in an affair. When Hitler, who was a financial supporter of the Bayreuth Festival, could no longer publicly endorse Lorenz, it was Siegfried’s wife Winifred who used her influence to rescue Bayreuth’s star heldentenor from public disgrace, exile and possible imprisonment over a charge of homosexuality.

Most historians concede that Hitler and Winnifred (below) carried on an affair after Siegfried’s death in 1930; there were even rumors of a possible marriage. Although Winifred was proud of her association with Hitler, when he visited her at Bayreuth, she took pains to conceal the connection. Hitler would register at the Hotel Bube in nearby Bad Berneck, and Winnifred would send her own car to pick him up, so that Hitler's ostentatious Mercedes would not be seen pulling into the driveway at Wahnfried, the Wagner family's villa built for Richard Wagner by King Ludwig II of Bavaria.





















Following in his father’s footsteps, Siegfried Wagner was also a composer, but his operas, although popular during his lifetime, never entered the standard repertoire. In 1896 Siegfried began conducting at the Bayreuth Festival and from 1906-1930 was the festival’s sole artistic director. In Siegfried’s controversial 1930 staging of his father’s opera Tannhäuser, he boldly embellished several scenes with scantily clad male teenagers.

Siegfried dedicated one of his eighteen operas to Franz Stassen, who designed illustrations for the programs for Wagnerian opera productions at Bayreuth (example at right). Franz also published homoerotic drawings and paintings and went on to become a major player in the Teutonic Art Nouveau style. During the last decade of his life Stassen wrote recollections about his male "soul mate", thus publicly hinting at his own homosexuality.

In the previous decade Stassen had also become associated with the Nazi Party. He created four important tapestries for Hitler's Reich Chancellery in Berlin that illustrated motifs of the Germanic Edda sagas. In gratitude, Hitler awarded him the title of professor in 1939.

After 1941 Franz lived openly with his male partner and professed his homosexual orientation, but the Third Reich generously overlooked and ignored this declaration. In the final phase of World War II, Hitler included Stassen in the Gottbegnadeten (Gifted by God) list of important artists most crucial to Nazi culture.



Wagnerian tenor Max Lorenz (right) was homosexual as well, but in 1932 he married Lotte Appel, a Jewish singer who was aware of his sexual orientation going into the marriage. Max’s homosexuality was tolerated by the Nazis as a well-known secret, because Lorenz was a favorite of Hitler. When Lorenz was dragged into court because of an affair with a young man, Hitler advised Winifred Wagner, the director of the Bayreuth Festival after Siegfried’s death in 1930, that Lorenz would not be suitable for the Festival. She replied that in that case she would have to close the Festival, because, “...without Lorenz, there can be no Bayreuth.” Lorenz was thus retained.

As for his Jewish wife Lotte, Max insisted on being open about his marriage of convenience, which was taken as a provocation by the Nazis. Once when Lorenz was away from his house, the SS burst in and tried to take Lotte and her mother away. At the last moment Lotte Lorenz was able to make a phone call to Hermann Göring’s sister, and the SS was ordered to leave their residence and not bother the women. Göring stated in a letter dated March 21, 1943, that Lorenz was under his personal protection, and that no action should be taken against him, his wife, or her mother.

Second Movement (1927) of Siegfried Wagner’s Symphony in C (in the 1925 first version of the symphony, the slow movement was recycled from the prelude to Der Friedensengel, an opera written in 1914, but not premiered until 1926 in Karlsruhe):

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Federico García Lorca

July 2, 2018, 12:18 am
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Lorca was an avante-garde homosexual Spanish poet and playwright who had a serious and scandalous affair with Salvador Dalí. Lorca, born near Granada, was considered the greatest Spanish poet of the twentieth century. He trained as a classical pianist, but also studied law, literature and musical composition. From his friendship with homosexual Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, Spanish folklore became his muse. Lorca’s early anthologies of poems were stylized imitations of the ballads and poems that were told throughout the Spanish countryside. When Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928) was published, it brought him fame across the Hispanic world.

From 1925 to 1928 he was passionately involved with Salvador Dalí. Their sexual relationship was portrayed in the recent film Little Ashes (2009). As Lorca’s reputation increased, however, he became estranged from Dalí. When a collapse of a love affair with sculptor Emilio Soriano Aladrén followed, Lorca moved to New York, where his homosexuality would perhaps be more accepted. At a time when in Spain hardly anyone traveled, Lorca prospered in New York, where he wrote his acclaimed work, "Poet in New York". He then went to Argentina, and even spent time in Cuba, where he was inspired to write "In a coach of black water I will go to Santiago". However, Lorca’s heavily homoerotic Sonnets of Dark Love (1935) were not published during his lifetime (see excerpt at end of post).

Lorca (below on left) shown with Salvador Dalí (on right) in 1926:


Lorca described himself as "Catholic, communist, anarchist, libertarian, traditionalist, monarchist." His works challenged the accepted role of women in society and explored taboo issues of homoeroticism and class distinctions (he was a passionate social activist). These outspoken liberal views led Franco to ban all of Lorca’s works. In fact, it was only after Franco's death in 1975 that Lorca's life and circumstances of his death could be openly discussed in Spain.

Lorca was envied for his talent, he had money and was successful. When the military took power, his execution was only a matter of time. A successful, liberal homosexual could not be tolerated in Franco's Spain, and he was shot by Franco’s anti-communist death squads during the Spanish Civil War.

Lorca had taken refuge in the home of poet Luis Rosales (now the Hotel Reina Cristina in Grenada) from where he was abducted. They came for him on August 19, 1936, and loaded him into a truck with other political suspects. He was shot a few kilometers from Fuente Vaqueros, Spain (where he had been born), but his body has still not been found.

Footnote:Manuel de Falla, who had become disillusioned with the Franco regime, tried but failed to prevent the murder of Lorca, his close friend. As a result, de Falla left Spain in 1939 for Argentina, never to return to his native country.

Lorca, who was assassinated at the tender age of 38, was a man whose crime was to be free at a time in Spain's history when to call for freedom was to knock on the executioner’s door.

This scene from the film Little Ashes shows the first kiss between Salvador Dali (Robert Pattinson) and Frederico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran). For you impatient types, the kiss takes place at the 1:43 mark.



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The Poet Speaks by Telephone with His Lover
– from Sonnets of Dark Love (1935)

My chest was dune and drought, your voice was water;
that wooden cabin ceased to be my coffin.
At the south pole of my feet the crocus sprang,
at the north pole of my brow the bramble bloomed.
A pine of light sang through each crack and corner,
sang with no seed sown in the earth nor dawn;
for the first time my cry flew like an arrow,
pinning a crown of hope upon the roof.
Sweet and distant voice coursing toward me,
sweet and distant fountain of my pleasure,
distant and sweet like a sunken river!
Distant as a half-hidden, wounded faun,
sweet as a sobbing draught from snowy fields,
distant yet sweetly lodged in my own marrow!
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Erasmus

July 17, 2018, 11:36 pm
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The Dutch humanist Erasmus (1466-1536) fell madly in love with a tall young monk named Servatius Roger. Erasmus wrote him scores of passionate, love-sick letters, to which Roger reacted by asking him to tone it down – way down, lest there be a scandal. Roger never gave in to the constant, overwrought advances. Here is a typical exchange:

Erasmus: Don’t be so reserved. I have become yours so completely that nothing of myself is left...I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly.

Roger: What is wrong with you?

This portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger (1523) hangs in London's National Gallery.

While later teaching in Paris, Erasmus instructed a 21-year-old English-born student, Thomas Grey, who later became Marquis of Dorset. Erasmus was abruptly dismissed as Grey’s teacher, for making unwanted advances towards him. It seems Erasmus had a thing for straight men.

Erasmus was born Gerrit Gerritszoon (Dutch for Gerard Gerardson) in Rotterdam as the illegitimate son of a physician's daughter and a man who later became a monk. On his parents' death his guardians insisted he enter a monastery, where he adopted the name Desiderius Erasmus. After taking priest's orders, Erasmus went to Paris, where he earned a living as a teacher. His life-long clashes with theologians and clergy took root while in France. Among his pupils was English Lord Mountjoy, who invited Erasmus to visit England in 1498. He lived chiefly at Oxford, and through the influence of John Colet, his contempt for theologians was heightened. He returned to Paris and later made a much longed for trip to Italy, but returned to England from time to time.

While residing at Cambridge Erasmus served as professor of Divinity and Greek. In 1519 the first edition of Colloquia appeared. Usually regarded as his masterpiece, Colloquia critiqued the abuses of the Church with audacity and incisiveness, preparing men's minds for the subsequent work of Martin Luther. In future works Erasmus promoted a more rational conception of Christian doctrine, emancipating men's minds from the frivolous and pedantic methods of contemporary theologians. Members of the clerical establishment became his sworn enemies, driving him to live out the rest of his days in Basel, Switzerland. Fortunately, during his last years Erasmus enjoyed great fame, fortune  and high regard.

Erasmus stands as the supreme example of cultivated common sense being applied to human affairs. He rescued theology from the pedantries of theologians, exposed the abuses of the Church, and did more than any other single person to advance the Revival of Learning.

A popular European student exchange program, established in 1987, is named after him. The Erasmus Programme is a major European Union higher education initiative; there are currently more than 4,000 higher education institutions participating in 33 countries, and more than 2.2 million students have already taken part.
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Ludwig Wittgenstein

September 18, 2018, 3:14 am
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The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was of half Jewish and half Catholic heritage. He was also a homosexual. One of eight children sired by an Austrian millionaire steel industrialist, Ludwig sought simplicity and solitude, rejecting the privileged and highly cultured lifestyle of his father and sister. Margaret, his sister, helped arrange Freud’s escape to England in 1938, and his father took a violin with him on business trips.

House guests at the Viennese home of the Wittgensteins included Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler and Bruno Walter, and private musical performances in the Wittgenstein's city palace in Vienna (staircase shown in photo) were coveted invitations. Ludwig was himself an accomplished musician and had perfect pitch. There were seven grand pianos in this house, just one of thirteen mansions they owned in downtown Vienna. The palace interior's Red Salon (below) affords a glimpse into the level of opulence Wittgenstein experienced while growing up. Unfortunately, the city palace was demolished by developers in the early 1950s. There was also a summer palace, of course, called the Hochreith, located in the countryside outside Vienna. At the time, the Wittgensteins were second in wealth only to the Rothschilds.


Ludwig’s brother Paul became a famous concert pianist, but three other brothers committed suicide. His brother Rudolph (Rudi), took his own life in a very public way. He mixed a packet of potassium cyanide into a glass of milk and drank it while having dinner in a Berlin restaurant. Two minutes later he was dead. Rudi killed himself because he was petrified that he would be identified in a case report by famous sexologist, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (himself a homosexual), describing in detail the problems of a homosexual student in Berlin. Rudi, a homosexual student in Berlin, was not at all comfortable with his sexuality. Their brother Johannes, also homosexual, took his own life, as well. Their father, Karl Wittgenstein, was humiliated by these acts and thereafter forbade family members to mention the name of either Johannes or Rudolph. A third brother, a military officer, shot himself when his troops deserted him. Paul, who lost an arm during the war, later settled in New York to teach music. Paul commissioned a piano concerto for the left hand only from composer Maurice Ravel. This photo shows Ludwig (on the left) with his brother Paul, the pianist (wearing glasses), before the tragic loss of Paul's right arm.

After serving in the Austrian Army during WW I, Ludwig Wittgenstein gave away his considerable fortune, always refused to wear a tie, furnished his rooms with simple deck chairs, played the clarinet, and wolfed down plates of cream doughnuts while watching his favorite John Wayne films. Wittgenstein gave up philosophy and taught in elementary schools in Lower Austria from 1920 to 1926. For a time he even took up a job as a gardener's assistant at a monastery. From 1926 to 1928 he became involved in the design of a modernist mansion for his sister, a testament to the aesthetic austerity that he championed (no baseboards, bare light bulbs for illumination). The house still stands in Vienna and serves as the Bulgarian Cultural Institute. I forgot to mention that Ludwig also took up sculpture – a true polymath.

Extraordinarily handsome as a youth, he counted Adolph Hitler among his classmates. They were the same age, but Wittgenstein was two grades apart from Hitler (Ludwig had been advanced a grade and Hitler held back one); there has been much speculation as to whether or not they were friends. At the age of nineteen Ludwig took up aeronautical studies in Manchester, England, where he designed a jet engine; the complex mathematics needed for such an endeavor led him to explore the foundations of mathematics. While at Cambridge he studied with an influential teacher, Bertrand Russell, and it is difficult to discern which had the greater impact on the other. Wittgenstein’s work was primarily in the philosophy of mathematics, the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. His two great published philosophical works are densely crafted and thus difficult to read and comprehend. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein is generally regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers.

In November 1912, on the recommendation of fellow student John Maynard Keynes (with whom Wittgenstein shared a male lover), Ludwig was elected to the elite Cambridge society known as the Apostles, which at that time maintained an aura of homoeroticism. An atmosphere that teetered on the brink of male/boy worship made Wittgenstein so uncomfortable that he stopped attending meetings. Ludwig was unsettled by his homosexuality and quite secretive about his sexual interests and activities. He wrote his diary in code, identifying the males with whom he had relations by a letter (Ben Richards was code named “Y”). This was perhaps to be expected, given the fact that homosexuality was illegal in Austria and Britain at the time. Historian Julie Anne Taddeo wrote, "The Cambridge Apostles transformed the definition of sodomy from an illegal and sinful act to an alternative creed of manliness and transcendental love and hoped to spread the gospel of the Higher Sodomy among their enlightened contemporaries."

During his student days in Vienna, Wittgenstein was known to cruise the Prater, a large public park where he hooked up with rough trade youths. He also frequented a café that was a chess club during the day, but a raucous gay bar by night. However, Wittgenstein went on to have several serious affairs with Englishmen of his own class – mathematics student David Pinsent, philosopher Frank Ramsey, the much-younger medical student Ben Richards, and architect Francis Skinner (at left in photo, shown walking with Wittgenstein). In 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge, where he became a professor in 1939. He resigned that post in 1947 to move to Ireland, where he hoped he’d find the solitude to complete his second great work, Philosophical Investigations. This plan didn’t come to fruition, unfortunately. It was published in its incomplete form in 1953, two years after his death from prostate cancer at the age of sixty two.

Ludwig died in Cambridge, housed in his doctor's home, since he did not wish to die in a hospital. He celebrated his 62nd birthday by taking a walk. Three days later, he was dead. His last words were, "Tell them I've had a wonderful life."
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Langston Hughes

September 24, 2018, 7:14 am
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Born February 1, 1902, Langston Hughes, a deeply closeted gay man, was an African-American poet, novelist, lecturer, columnist and playwright who became one of the foremost interpreters of racial relationships in the United States. Born in the south, he dropped out of Columbia University to experience the world of jazz and nightclubs and went on to become a major component of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He was one of the innovators of the new literary art form called jazz poetry. He worked menial jobs, and was “discovered” as a poet while working as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC. The story goes that Hughes dropped his poems beside the poet Vachel Lindsay's dinner plate, and Lindsey included several of them in his next poetry reading. Lindsay’s interest and support launched a major career for Hughes.

This event spawned a local chain of restaurants in the Washington, DC area called “Busboys and Poets” (your blogger has enjoyed many evenings there drinking, dining, playing cards, watching films and taking in live shows and poetry readings). Hughes, who went on to become one of the first black authors who could support himself by writing, became a friend of Ernest Hemingway, with whom he attended bullfights. He wrote lyrics for “Street Scene,” an opera by Kurt Weill and Elmer Rice, as well as screenplays for Hollywood films. His original works portrayed people whose lives were impacted by racism and sexual conflicts; he often wrote about southern violence. However, he felt he had to remain sexually closeted in order to maintain the financial support and respect of various black churches and other cultural institutions.

Hughes had more life experience to draw upon than most, and his world view was vast. Having been born in the segregated deep south of Joplin, Missouri, he later lived in Mexico, Paris and Italy. He worked as a seaman on jaunts to Africa and Europe, spent a year in the Soviet Union, and served as a Madrid correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American.

His career successes helped break the chains of poverty into which he had felt trapped. For the last twenty years of his life he owned his own home in Harlem, a brownstone at 20 E. 127th Street. 

In 1967, Hughes died at the age of 65 from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer. He left an enduring legacy.

A poem written when Hughes was 18 years old:

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I danced in the Nile when I was old
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

– from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," 1920

Sources: Wikipedia, Charles H. Hughes, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997), Out Magazine
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Alexander von Humboldt

October 16, 2018, 12:58 am
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Prussian naturalist, explorer of Central and South America, author of a 23-volume work on his travels, and of the seminal Cosmos, which laid the foundations for modern physical geography and meteorology, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a leading European figure of his day, considered second only to Napoleon in influence. A major Pacific current, numerous cities, counties, and other landmarks bear his name. In fact, more places and species are named after Humboldt than any other person. To this day things continue to be named after him. When the grand, rebuilt City Palace in Berlin opens next year (September 14, 2019), it will be named the Humboldt Forum. Humboldt was born and died in Berlin, and the forum’s opening will be exactly 250 years since the day Humboldt was born.  It will be the German equivalent of the British Museum.

During his lifetime Humboldt’s same sex attraction was widely noted. While some biographers say that there is no “proof” that he was gay, there is plenty of incriminating evidence. When he died, his sister burned all of his love letters. Humboldt left his entire estate to his male “servant,” Johann Seifert, who was some thirty years younger. During the nineteenth century, a common way to “hide” a same sex relationship was to pass off one’s lover as a servant, especially if the two were of different social classes. Humboldt was of the monied class; Seifert was not. Humboldt was also somewhat effeminate and masochistic. Seifert was domineering and bullying by nature. To your blogger, this seems a perfect fit.

When Humboldt was 25 years old he met a 21-year-old Lieutenant named Reinhard von Haeften. Humboldt was so besotten with von Haeften that he desired his presence at all times, so Humboldt invited him to live under his own roof. At Humboldt’s invitation and patronage, the two traveled extensively. Humboldt used the code letter “R” when referring to von Haeften in letters to colleagues and friends. This went on for two years, and after von Haeften married his pregnant fiancée, Humboldt lived with the newlyweds for six months. Must have been cozy. In fact, Humboldt was so brazen that, before the marriage, he contacted von Haeften’s fiancée to tell her that he had found the perfect house in Switzerland for the three of them to live in. As if.


Likewise with esteemed French botanist Aimé Bonpland, another favored male companion who lived and traveled with Humboldt for five years. In attentive detail they wrote descriptions of the masculine beauty of South American Indians. From 1799-1804 they explored the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, the Andes mountains and parts of Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia and Mexico, collecting specimens of rocks and plants. They investigated volcanoes, ocean currents, the earth’s magnetism, climate and animal life. Humboldt funded this five-year exploration with his own inheritance.

Humboldt died from a stroke at age 89, but he was still publishing scientific works right up to the time of his death. When biographers started poking around, they discovered letters written to friends and travel companions that revealed that Humboldt had been amorously corresponding with men. Even skeptics admit that it seems hard not to confirm suspicions  that Humboldt was gay. But further "proof" went up in flames, literally, when Humboldt's sister burned all his love letters. And why might that have been? Hmmm.....



Sources:

Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Wayne Dynes)

Vincent Gabrielle (California-based gay scientist and blogger)

The Humboldt Society lecture, Philadelphia, 1996

The Life of Alexander von Humboldt (Maren Meinhardt)

Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography (Nicolaas Rupke)

Wikipedia

NOGLSTP (National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals)
 
 
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Dirk Bogarde

November 15, 2018, 6:43 am
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Handsome British film actor Dirk Bogarde’s lawyer, Laurence Harbottle, said, “I share the view of every friend of his whom I have ever known – that Dirk’s nature was entirely homosexual in orientation.”

Well, there you have it.

Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999), who portrayed numerous gay and bisexual men on the screen, spent his entire career sublimating or denying his true sexual orientation. He wanted more than anything to be regarded as a straight leading man. He was called the British Rock Hudson for his good looks and appealing on-screen persona, but the two actors had more than beauty and acting style in common.   

English actor John Fraser wrote in his memoir, Close Up (2004):

“But (Dirk) could not accept, could not understand, and could not see when he watched his own performances, that he was effeminate.”

Bogarde aspired for an international film career, not one limited to British audiences. Yet he blamed the utter failure of his sole Hollywood film, Song Without End, in which he portrayed Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt, on anyone other than himself. He blamed his contract with the Rank Organization for limiting him to a long stream of British films, and he complained that he was grossly underpaid.

He was a gifted painter and art restorer, a talented interior decorator and a successful writer, authoring six novels and multiple volumes of autobiography in which not a word about his true sexual orientation appeared. His lover of 50 years, Anthony Forwood (left), was referred to as “Forwood”, in an attempt to portray their relationship as merely one of employer and employee (everyone else called him Tony). Forwood had left his actress wife, Glynis Johns, and their son to move in with Bogarde to become his “manager.” Rare photo of Forwood and Bogarde together (below):










Bogarde’s talent as a writer was often put to good use in embellishing screenplay dialogue.

From The Victim (1961):

In the film Dirk’s character, lawyer Melville Farr, is confronted by his beautiful wife, Laura (portrayed by Sylvia Syms*), who demands an explanation of who this boy Barrett was, how they knew each other, and why Mel stopped seeing him.

Dirk’s character responds:

“Alright – alright, you want to know. I’ll tell you – you won’t be content until I tell you, will you? – until you’ve RIPPED it out of me. I stopped seeing him because I WANTED him. Can you understand – because I WANTED him. Now what good has that done you?”

The dialogue as it appeared in the original script went this way:

“You won’t be content till I tell you. I put the boy outside the car because I wanted him. Now what good has that done you?”


*Younger readers might recall Ms. Syms as the Queen Mother to Helen Mirren in “The Queen” (2006).

The powerful scene starts at the 4:39 timing mark, and the above bit of dialogue is at 8:35
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am9xWQrvnRA&list=PL692D14268C966A3C

Well, this was a film in which a real life gay man was portraying a gay character, a lawyer who tries to right an injustice involving blackmail for being gay. The Victim was the first movie in which the word "homosexual" was spoken on screen, and Bogarde later took credit for writing-in the scene that was the first instance of a man saying "I love you" to another man. Unfortunately, this film all but ended his career as a leading man, yet it opened the door to later brilliant film portrayals as a character actor. Bogarde was knighted in 1992 for his contributions to acting.

The impact of this film cannot be overstated. As American film makers were struggling to make homosexual material acceptable to the Hays Code** and the Legion of Decency***, this British film appeared in which an explicitly gay character actually stood up to fight a system that oppressed homosexuals. In "Victim," Dirk Bogarde was the screen's first gay hero.

**Hays Code (1930-1968): film censorship standards named after Presbyterian elder Will Hays of Indiana, who served as Postmaster General in the cabinet of President Warren Harding. Hays had also served as head of the Republican National Committee. The Supreme Court had already decided unanimously in 1915 that free speech did not extend to motion pictures, and the Hays Office codified objectionable material. Enforcement began in 1934, when the release of any film was held up until the movie studio acquired a certificate of approval from the Hays Office. If a gay character was allowed in a film, that character was open to scorn and ridicule, and most often died by the end of the movie. It was not until after the Hays Code was replaced by the current rating system in 1968 (G, PG, R, N17) that a movie appeared in which gays celebrated their sexual orientation, not to mention that all the gay characters were still living when the end credits rolled – Boys in the Band (1970).

***Legion of Decency was established by the American Catholic Church in 1933, with even stricter standards. Their clout was the constant threat of massive boycotts against films that did not meet their moral standards.

The entire film can be seen on YouTube in 10 installments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Nzrq1jKNM&list=PL692D14268C966A3C

Three stages of Dirk Bogarde: early, middle and late:



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Steel Magnate Friedrich Alfred Krupp

December 1, 2018, 1:07 am
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The multimillionaire German steel industrialist F. A. Krupp (1854-1902) loved the Italian island of Capri, off the coast of Naples, where he resided for several months each year at the Hotel Quisisana*. He kept two yachts there, Maya and Puritan, from which he entertained and pursued his hobby of oceanography. He could well afford to, since his father – Alfred, the Cannon King – had amassed the largest personal fortune in Germany. Alfred's power was so great that crowned heads negotiated directly with him.

While on the island, Krupp (known all his life as Fritz)  indulged his homosexual leanings in a big way. He set up a lavish private pleasure club in a grotto, where he entertained underage Italian boys, mostly the sons of local fishermen. Man on man sex was performed to the accompaniment of a live string quartet, and orgasms were celebrated with bursts of fireworks. Solid gold pins shaped like artillery shells or two crossed forks, both designed by Krupp, were given to the boys if they performed well. I'm not making this up.

When Krupp's wife, back home in Germany, heard rumors of what was going on, she went straight to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who promptly had her committed to an insane asylum in Jena. The thinking was that the Krupp industrialist empire (steel and arms manufacturing) was too vital to German national security to be compromised, even if such lurid stories were deemed true. Besides, Fritz was an important philanthropist who advanced the study of eugenics, which was later to become associated with the Nazis. The company lives on today as Thyssen-Krupp AG, the result of a controversial merger completed in 1999. The new company operates worldwide in steel manufacture, capital goods (elevators and industrial equipment) and services (specialty materials, environmental services, mechanical engineering, and scaffolding services).

But I digress. Krupp’s homosexual tastes predated his holidays on Capri. Conrad Uhl, proprietor of the Hotel Bristol in Berlin, related that he was charged with supplying Fritz with young boys when he stayed there. However, the German press eventually found out about Krupp's illicit private affairs, and printed the whole story, complete with damning photographs taken by Krupp himself inside the grotto on Capri. On  November 15, 1902, the Social Democratic magazine Vorwärts reported that Friedrich Alfred Krupp was homosexual, that he had a number of liaisons with local boys and men, and that his principal attachment was to Adolfo Schiano, an 18-year-old barber and amateur musician who lived on Capri. A week later, Krupp requested a meeting with his close friend, Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose circle of friends included many prominent gay men. On the day he was to meet the emperor, November 22, 1902, Krupp was found dead in his home. Rather than face disgrace, Krupp had committed suicide; he was 48 years old at the time.

The suicide was covered up, and his body was concealed in a casket with no autopsy, even though law required it. No one, not even close relatives, was allowed to see the body. After three days, Germany had a great memorial ceremony involving the Kaiser, who was closely allied to the family. When Fritz was laid to rest in the Krupp family cemetery in Essen, his tomb was guarded day and night.

Ten years ago, when I first visited Capri**, I looked down in wonder from the Gardens of Augustus to the switchback paved footpath known as the Via Krupp, a scenic walkway constructed by Fritz in 1900. Ostensibly Via Krupp was a connection for Fritz between his rooms at the Hotel Quisisana and Marina Piccola, the small port where his marine biology research ship (ironically named the Puritan) lay at anchor. Secretly, however, this path conveyed him to Grotta di Fra’ Felice, the grotto where sex orgies with local boys took place. When the scandal surfaced, Krupp was asked to leave Italy in 1902, and a week  after his return to Germany his life was over.

*The Grand Hotel Quisisana is today a member of Leading Hotels of the World.
www.quisisana.com/en/index

**At the time I had no knowledge of this lurid tale. Today there is a small family-run three star hotel called Villa Krupp on Capri which many people mistakenly believe was built by Fritz Krupp. However, this structure was built as a private villa in 1900 by Eduardo Settanni. By the way, Capri was then known as the gay capital of Europe, hosting hordes of lesbians and gay men, who could pursue their interests openly. Tip: remember to pronounce Capri with the accent on the first syllable (KAH-pree).

The Via Krupp descends 300 feet from the Gardens of Augustus to Marina Piccola, where Fritz hosted all male sex orgies in the nearby Grotta di Fra’ Felice. The iron gate pictured below leads to the grotto. He referred to this grotto as the "holy place of a secret fraternity," and he gave out golden keys to the private gate to waiters and fisherman. He wasn’t even trying to be discrete. This stone path, which had been closed for thirty years because of the danger of falling rocks, was reopened to foot traffic in 2009.


Photo below: On Capri Fritz Krupp satisfies his "needs," which leads to disaster (Auf Capri geht Fritz Krupp den Bedürfnissen nach, die ihm schließlich zum Verhängnis werden) – a scene from the 2009 three-part German TV miniseries, Krupp – Eine Deutsche Familie. In this scene Krupp (center) brings one of the local boys back to his hotel to "satisfy his needs."

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Ray Hill

December 3, 2018, 7:15 am
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1940-2018




Before Houston, TX, native Ray Hill became a galvanizing gay activist, he had been a Baptist evangelist and a convicted burglar who served four years in prison. Not a typo.

Mr. Hill, who died November 24,  was a larger-than-life character who said, "I was born to rub the cat hair the wrong direction." He described his occupation as a "journeyman-quality hell raiser, and on his business cards the words "Citizen Provocateur" were printed under his name.He partnered with San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk to organize the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. 80,000 activists showed up. But the second national march he helped organize drew more than 200,000 people in 1987, the largest gay rights demonstration in history.

A renowned radio broadcaster, he co-founded KPTF-FM in Houston, where he started a program on LGBTG issues. In 1980 Texas prisoners could not call home or close relatives. Although Hill lobbied for a 2007 state law allowing such, his prior efforts resulted in radio's "The Prison Show" with a call-in segment that allowed families to update inmates with greetings, family news and news of births and deaths and such trivialities as children's soccer game scores.

He bullied Anita Bryant in 1977 but campaigned for several female politicians, most notably Annise Parker, who became Houston's first gay mayor in 2010. But that's not all. When his sister died in an automobile accident in 1977, Mr. Hill raised her two children. In fact, his entire life became a legacy of service to others. 

After losing his left leg and right foot to diabetes, he resided at Omega House in Houston, a hospice center he helped establish in the 1980s. He had been hospitalized earlier this year with heart problems. His funeral was held yesterday on the steps of Houston's City Hall, where Mayor Sylvester Turner delivered a statement that called Mr. Hill a warrior in the fight for gay rights, human rights and criminal justice reforms.
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Aiden Shaw

December 30, 2018, 3:57 pm
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British-born model, writer and former porn star Aiden Shaw (b. 1966) had a traditional upbringing in England. He came from respectability and has returned to it again, but there’s no ignoring that wild detour in the early 1990s when he established himself as a popular star of gay porn. What set him apart from his adult film peers was that he was a man of intellect.

Shaw made over 50 pornographic films, earning several industry awards along the way. He stood out from the pack of blonds and their smooth all-over-tanned bodies. Shaw didn’t shave his chest and obviously didn’t sunbathe in the nude – in fact, his sharply defined tan line became a trademark. He was further distinguished by his British accent, although his porn roles required limited use of his speaking voice. Shaw’s screen persona was that of a traditionally handsome natural man possessed of a spectacularly generous endowment (and a rose tattoo on his arm). In fact, his penis was as much discussed in the 1990s as international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa’s(*) was in the 1930s (we're all of us too young to remember – just Goggle him). Many of Shaw’s fans noticed a startling facial resemblance to Richard Gere (see photo below).

*OK, I've received numerous E-mails about this, so here's a hint. To this day in Paris, if a restaurant patron wants one of those tall wooden peppermills, he says, "Waiter, may I please have a Rubirosa?" I kid you not.

He became one of the most popular global adult male stars before retiring from the porn industry in 1999 (he was diagnosed HIV positive in 1997). Although a car accident brought a hiatus to his porn career – for a time he was paralyzed and in a wheelchair – he made a return with four more adult videos in 2003/2004.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to reconcile his current appearance as a classically handsome, mature man with salt and pepper hair and a beard with his actual age – 52. He looks years older, in a good way. Talk about aging gracefully.

He comes across as a confident, worldly man, the perfect type for promoting luxury goods. He has modeled for GQ Magazine in Berlin, Le Figaro and El Pais, as well as in other print venues. That his present appearance renders him nearly unrecognizable from his days as a porn star is surely to his advantage, although the rose tattoo is an identity giveaway.

Shaw has worked in diverse fields, as an editor of an interior design magazine, a poet, an HIV activist, vocalist, producer, escort, composer and writer. Print modeling is merely his latest career turn. He undertook formal studies in film, television, photography and video, subsequently taking post- college jobs directing and art directing music videos. Shaw wrote and produced two albums of music, performing lead vocals with his band "Whatever". Individual tracks are available on iTunes.

The first chapter of his autobiography, My Undoing: Life in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography and Prostitution (2006), begins: “All I could see were pretty shapes and colours, my dick going in and out of his white cheeks.” From his days as an escort, his comment on how to have sex with men who repulse him: “Well, the thing is, very few men physically repulse me. Like a good whore, I can always find something about a man that I like.”

From an interview with Daniel Lee in NYC in 2003:

DL: What makes you laugh hardest?
AS: Getting treated special because I have a big dick.

DL: Would you prefer not to be treated special because you have big dick?
AS: No way!

Well, there you have it.

Shaw’s writing is described by Michael Musto of The Village Voice as prose that “can tug at your heartstrings and your crotch at the same time.” His first novel, Brutal, appeared in 1996, the same year he published a collection of poems titled If Language at the Same Time Shapes and Distorts Our Ideas and Emotions, How Do We Communicate Love? (it sold out), followed by two more novels, Boundaries (1997) and Wasted (2001).

Shaw completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing in 2007 at Goldsmiths University of London, followed by publication of a second autobiography, Sordid Truths (2009). In 2011, Shaw completed training to become a qualified English teacher.

Shaw was recently profiled in the Spring/Summer 2012 issue of Hercules Universal– One Last Colony, the Havana Affair– in which he models luxury men’s clothing (click on link).

http://models.com/mdx/?p=14427

At present Mr. Shaw divides his time between residences in London and Barcelona. In 2016 he reverted to his birth name: Aiden Brady. Here is a sampling of his recent modeling work. You're welcome.





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Johann Rosenmüller

January 25, 2019, 7:33 am
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2019 is the 400th anniversary of the birth of Johann Rosenmüller (1619-1684), an important baroque composer of instrumental and sacred vocal music in Germany and Italy at the middle of the seventeenth century. He was an organist, trombonist, teacher and composer who survived a homosexual scandal in Leipzig and escaped to Italy, where he resurrected a major career in Venice.


After graduating from the University of Leipzig, he became the assistant to the Thomasschule Cantor (director of music). Working his way up, he was next appointed organist at the Nicolaikirche, one of the three important churches in the city. As his boss became increasingly ill, Rosenmüller was assured he would be next in line for the position of Cantor at the Thomasschule, the same position that Johann Sebastian Bach would assume seventy years later. In 1655, however, Rosenmüller was arrested on charges of seducing several of his choir boys; he subsequently escaped from jail and fled to Venice, where he supported himself by playing trombone at St. Mark’s Basilica.



Some years later, he attained a position as maestro di coro (master of the chorus), at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage school that featured an acclaimed all-girl* choir and orchestra that performed liturgical functions and gave concerts on Sunday afternoons. A generation later Antonio Vivaldi famously directed the musical activities at this orphanage school, elevating the female choir and orchestra to world-wide fame, attracting many tourists. Today the Metropole Hotel is the former music building, and guides point out (erroneously) that the church to the left of the hotel was the church where Vivaldi’s girls performed. In fact, the church was built many years after Vivaldi’s death.



*Many of these girls were the illegitimate children of Venetian nobles, who lavishly supported the school. The girls performed behind screens so that their “comeliness would not distract those in attendance”. Your blogger surmises that a more plausible cause might have been to hide any physical resemblance of the orphans to their noble (actual) parents. Scandal!



Rosenmüller’s sacred compositions reflected an obvious Italian influence, and students who came from Germany to study with him took these works back to their homeland, thus introducing Italian musician idioms to Germany. In 1682, considering that the coast was clear after an interval of nearly 30 years, he left Italy and returned to his homeland, Germany, where he became court composer for a duke at Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony. He died there in 1684, at age 65. In the annals of classical music history, Rosenmüller is hardly a household word, but his name is frequently mentioned as the man who held two posts eventually filled by much more famous men, J. S. Bach and Antonio Vivaldi. Not to mention the well-documented homosexual scandal.

Sources:

Graeme Skinner: “Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History from Antiquity to World War II”.

Robert A. Green, Professor at the School of Music, Northern Illinois University. GLBTQ Archive.

Wikipedia
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Pete Buttigieg

March 20, 2019, 6:30 am
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Gay Rust Belt Mayor Pete Buttigieg Qualifies for First Presidential Debate; Pinch Yourself


For the first time in history, an openly gay man will participate in a Democratic party presidential debate. South Bend (Indiana) Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced on Saturday, March 16 that he had reached the 65,000* individual donor goal which qualifies him to be invited to the first DNC debate (June 2019) before the 2020 presidential election. He also met the requirement that donors must come from at least 20 states.

*76,025 donors as of Saturday morning, March 16, 2019

Buttigieg is competing for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 national election. If successful, he would be the first openly gay president, as well as the youngest (39 on inauguration day 2021). Mayor Pete, as he likes to be called, considering that tongue stopping last name (BOOT-edge-edge), turned in a star performance March 10, 2019, on a live CNN Town Hall held in Austin, TX. If you have not listened to this broadcast, see the YouTube link below. 

Your blogger was born (and continues to live) in the Washington DC suburbs, so I have been saturated with politics my entire life, yet I have never heard a politician speak so calmly and eloquently, with a quiet determination and assurance. He answers every question! No deflections! He mentions solutions and policies that need to be explored, all delivered with a refreshing candor and vision. And relatable. I’m still pinching myself. Consider it your civic duty to listen to the entire broadcast of 43 minutes. If nothing else, he should be hired by any candidate on how to handle an interview or town hall session.

My favorite quote from the CNN Town Hall:

When asked how he would respond to criticism from Trump:

"I'm a gay man from Indiana. I know how to handle a bully."




This man is only 37 (born January 19, 1982), openly gay (married public school teacher Chasten Glezman in June 2018; photo below), informed and eloquent. A Harvard graduate (BA) and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (MA), where he received a “first” in economics. Not to mention a veteran of the war in Afghanistan; he remains a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. Mayor Pete speaks English, Arabic, Dari, Spanish, Norwegian, French, Italian and Maltese (his father emigrated from Malta, where Buttigieg is a common name). When he ran for reelection for mayor as an out gay man in 2015, he won with more than 80% of the vote. In red state Indiana. Believe it.


P.S.: Interested in learning more about Mayor Pete? He has a new book out, a memoir -- Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future (pub. Feb. 12, 2019). The Guardian (British daily newspaper) stated that Buttigieg “has written the best political autobiography since Barack Obama”. 


An excerpt:


(Buttigieg met his husband online, and their first date included a visit to the South Bend Cubs. They made it to the sixth inning before they ditched the game for a walk by the river.)


“I felt the slight brushing of his hand coming closer to mine,” he writes, “and I took hold of it. Nothing in my life, from shaking hands with a president to experiencing my first rocket attack, matched the thrill of holding Chasten’s hand for the first time. I was electrified. We got back to the car just as the post-game fireworks began, and as the explosions and lit colors unfolded over us, he went in for a kiss … It only took a few weeks for me to acknowledge the obvious: I was in love.”

Photo below: Buttigieg upon returning from deployment in Afghanistan.

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Umberto II of Savoy

June 8, 2019, 1:36 am
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Last King of Italy

The only son of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, King Umberto II (1904-1983) is found on many lists of the shortest-reigning monarchs in history. He was regent of Italy from May 9 to June 12, 1945. Thus known as the “May King”, he was Italy’s last king before the monarchy was abolished and the nation became a Republic. After a dubious 1945 plebiscite, Umberto of Savoy was forced into exile in Cascais, Portugal, to avoid a civil war. His family ties to Musolini did not favor his fate.

Umberto had earlier entered into an arranged marriage to a Belgian Princess, carrying out a tradition common to European royalty, but he lived apart from his wife except for public appearances. It is confirmed that he spent his wedding night and entire honeymoon apart from his wife, instead enjoying the company of male “friends” to whom Umberto gave diamond-studded fleur-de-lis shaped mementos and jewels in the shape of the letter “U” (the fleur-de-lis was the symbol of the Savoy dynasty). Those young men flaunted the gifts in public. When Umberto later called on his wife, he was always in the company of someone else and had himself formally announced. Their first child was not born until after four years of marriage, and rumors persisted that they were born by artificial insemination or were fathered by men other than Umberto. Umberto and his wife kept separate apartments, separate beds and had separate circles of friends. Hmm...

He also engaged in relations with many homosexuals of both high and low born pedigree. Many of them were oung military officers, such as Enrico Montanari, who recounted that in the city of Turin during 1927, as a lieutenant he was persistently courted by Prince Umberto. Montanari wrote that Umberto gave him a silver cigarette lighter inscribed with "Dimmi di sì!" (Say yes to me!). Further, a biography of film-director Luchino Visconti revealed explicit details about the director’s sexual relationship with the Prince. Others have come forward with evidence that Umberto’s lovers included French actor Jean Marais and boxer Primo Carnera.


Various actresses have been forthcoming with details of how Umberto (1944 photo at right) surrounded himself with glamorous women to give the impression that he was a gallant playboy, but all of them said their relationships with Umberto were platonic, and that these “romances” were merely staged to deflect rumors of his homosexual activity.

When Umberto became ill in his late seventies, he was not allowed to return to Italy to die. His death occurred in 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland, but he was buried on French soil in the Savoy family tomb in Haute-Combe. No representative of the Italian government attended his funeral.

Source:
Giovanni Dall’Orto in “Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History” (Vol. I, 2001), edited by Aldrich and Wotherspoon.
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Keith Haring

July 19, 2019, 1:48 pm
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Pop culture artist Keith Haring (1958-1990), was a gay man whose simplistic images were influenced by New York City graffiti artists. His art had a strong graphic quality, with figures or objects drawn in outline form with rays emanating from them – instantly recognizable the world over. Unfortunately, his short life was halted by AIDS, and he succumbed to the disease at the age of thirty-one.

Keith Allen Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and he was raised in a nearby rural farming community. He showed artistic promise from his childhood years, when he was an avid drawer of cartoons. As a teenager he became aware of Andy Warhol’s work and was fascinated by the prospect of mass-produced pop art that celebrated common objects. He moved to Pittsburgh after graduating from high school and it was there that he realized his homosexuality and art were interconnected, prompting a move to NYC, the center of both the art world and gay culture.


In the early 1980s he began creating his iconic graffiti drawings in the city’s subways. Haring worked at the Tony Shafrazi gallery, and in 1982 his employer launched his first major show, in which many of the works displayed homoerotic content. His images, bereft of detail, were ideal for social awareness campaigns, and his designs were soon used for UNICEF causes, AIDS prevention, literacy campaigns and even to fight apartheid in South Africa.

Within five years of his arrival in NYC, Haring’s popularity and unique artistic expression made him a rich man and a cultural celebrity. Madonna, one of his biggest fans, explained that Haring’s art had such a vast appeal because, "there was a lot of innocence and joy that was coupled with a brutal awareness of the world."

Among his projects included a mural created for the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 1986, on which Haring worked with 900 children,  a mural on the exterior of Necker Children’s Hospital in Paris, France in 1987, and a mural painted on the western side of the Berlin Wall three years before its fall. Haring also held drawing workshops for children in schools and museums in New York, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Bordeaux, and produced imagery for many literacy programs and other public service campaigns.

Influenced by Andy Warhols’ commercialism, Haring opened the Pop Shop in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood, where products bearing his images could reach a mass market. Responding to critics who said he had “sold out” his art, Haring explained that fine art was an expensive commodity beyond the reach of the middle class, and his retail outlet allowed ordinary people to own his work. More than twenty years after his death, the Pop Shop lives on and has expanded to encompass Internet operations.

Portrait of Haring (at left)



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Titanic Memorial: A Tribute to "Friendship"

August 7, 2019, 3:22 pm
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Just a few yards from the White House south lawn sits a little-known monument related to the ill-fated Titanic, which struck an iceberg exactly one hundred years ago today. Described as a “tribute to friendship,” this fountain along E St. honors Francis Davis Millet and Archibald Butt, two men who went down with the vessel, selflessly assisting women and children as the ship sank. Millet was 60, and Butt 46 at the time of the tragedy.

The two “devoted friends” shared a house in DC, even though Millet had married (his wife lived elsewhere). Butt described Millet as “my artist friend who lives with me.” Their only recorded spat was over the wallpaper Millet had chosen for their home (too many red and pink roses for Butt’s taste). Their live-in Filipino houseboys served presidents, cabinet members, ambassadors and Supreme Court justices during lavish parties and dinners the male hosts were famous for. President Taft wept openly when he learned that Butt had perished in the Titanic tragedy, yet the two well-connected men have been forgotten with the passage of time.

The joint monument is a stone fountain designed by the sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Thomas Hastings. Among other of French's works here in Washington are the seated statue of Lincoln inside the Lincoln memorial and the Dupont Circle Fountain. Hastings was architect of the elegant amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, but his best known building is the New York Public Library. At any rate, the design team boasted impeccable pedigrees.

This memorial was paid for by funds raised privately by friends of the two men, both of whom were widely known in Washington's cultural, social, and political circles. Frank Millet (right), a skilled painter, was a member of the Fine Arts Commission who also directed the American Academy in Rome, Italy. Major Butt had been a military aide to both President Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. The fountain today sits not far from where Major Butt's White House office was located.

The two men had a tenant in their Washington home, a young diplomat named Archie Clark Kerr, who worked at the British Embassy. He returned to Washington 35 years later as Lord Inverchapel, the British Ambassador. Kerr caused quite a stir among diplomatic circles by suddenly disappearing to Eagle Grove, Iowa, to stay with a strapping farm boy Kerr had come upon while the lad was waiting for a bus on the streets of Washington. So there you have it.

Frank Millet had a studio in Rome in the early 1870s, and one in Venice a few years later. While in Venice Millet lived with Charles Warren Stoddard, a well-known American travel journalist and poet who had a sexual interest in men. Historian Jonathan Ned Katz published letters from Millet to Stoddard that confirm they lived a bohemian life together in a romantic and intimate relationship. But the most important relationship of Millet’s life was not with Stoddard or even his wife – it was with Archibald Butt.

Fast forward to the early spring of 1912. Millet and Butt (left) together boarded the steamship Berlin for a six-week trip to Europe. To say that they were a conspicuous pair is understatement. Butt wore bright, copper-colored trousers with a Norfolk jacket, fastened by big ball-shaped buttons of red porcelain, a lavender tie, a tall collar, broad-brimmed hat, patent leather shoes with white tops, a bunch of lilies in his buttonhole and a handkerchief tucked into his sleeve. The two men returned home to America together, too, in first class cabins aboard the “unsinkable” Whitestar liner RMS Titanic. On the night of April 14, the ship struck an iceberg and sank the next morning with Butt and Millet among the 1,517 victims of the disaster.

Although the intimate relationship between Millet and Butt was never mentioned publicly, it was common knowledge among Washington insiders, and the fact that their friends erected a joint monument to their memory is a remarkable and poignant tribute, considering the mores of the day.

The 8-foot tall marble fountain displays bas-reliefs of both men. On one side of the shaft placed atop the fountain is a military figure with sword and shield representing Major Butt, and an artist with palette and brush represents Millet. Besides being a memorial, the fountain was designed to double as a water fountain for the horses ridden by U.S. Park Police while on patrol.

Inscription carved around the upper rim of the fountain:

IN MEMORY OF FRANCIS DAVIS MILLET · 1846 - 1912 ·
AND ARCHIBALD WILLINGHAM BUTT · 1865 - 1912 ·
THIS MONUMENT HAS BEEN ERECTED BY THEIR FRIENDS WITH THE SANCTION OF CONGRESS

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Baron von Steuben

August 22, 2019, 3:30 am
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I’ve written about gay king Frederick the Great of Prussia. However, I just learned that a former aide of his had to flee Prussia amid allegations of taking familiarities with young boys. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, an experienced military officer, made his way to America with the aid of Benjamin Franklin, who was based in Paris at the time, trying to convince the French to come to our aid in fighting the British. George Washington asked for the Baron’s assistance in bringing order to the tattered Continental troops serving in the Revolutionary War. General Washington sent him to Valley Forge in February, 1778.

The soldiers were unaccustomed to the Baron’s – well, let’s call it "style". Von Steuben showed up in a grandiose sleigh (sporting 24 jingling bells) pulled by black Percheron draft horses. The Baron was wearing a robe of silk trimmed with fur, all the while petting his miniature greyhound, Azor, who was curled up on his lap. Behind him were his retinue of African servants, a French chef, his French aide-de-camp Louis de Pontière and the Baron’s 17-year-old lover/secretary Pierre-Étienne du Ponceau.

Impressive, if not entirely appropriate.

However, von Steuben proved his worth and soon shaped a hundred soldiers into a model company that, in turn, trained others in Prussian military tactics. He was a mere captain, but was so invaluable to Washington, that he was promoted to Major General.  In 1781, he served under the Marquis de Lafayette in Virginia when the British General Charles Cornwallis invaded. He also served at the siege of Yorktown, where he commanded one of the three divisions of Washington's army.

Steuben spoke little English, and he often yelled to his translator, "Hey! Come over here and swear for me!" Steuben punctuated the screaming of his translator with fierce-sounding shouts in German and French. In an effort to codify training, Steuben wrote a Revolutionary War Drill Manual, which became the standard method for training army troops for over thirty years. It addresses the arms and accoutrements of officers and soldiers, formation and exercise of a company, instruction of recruits, formation and marching, inspection, etc., etc.

Steuben became an American citizen by act of the Pennsylvania legislature in March 1784. In 1790, Congress gave him a pension of $2,500 a year, which he received until his death, and an estate near Utica, NY, granted to him for his military service to our nation.

But wait, that’s not all. Steuben legally adopted two handsome soldiers (one of them, William North, became a U.S. Senator). A third young man, John Mulligan, considered himself a member of the stable of Steuben’s “sons.” Before moving in with Steuben, Mulligan had been living with Charles Adams*, the son of then-Vice President John Adams. Adams was concerned about the intense “closeness” between his son and Mulligan, insisting that they split up, so Mulligan wrote to Von Steuben with his tale of despair. Actually, Von Steuben offered to take both men into his arms home. Charles Adams, the handsomest son of one president and brother of another (John Quincy), resided with Von Steuben and Mulligan for a while. The 19-year-old Mulligan received – how shall we say – a very warm welcome. Von Steuben was a 62-year-old bachelor at the time. Hmmm.

Adams left the cozy love nest after a short while, but Mulligan stayed on for several years, serving as Von Steuben’s “secretary” until the Baron’s death. Mulligan inherited von Steuben’s library, maps and $2,500 cash, a considerable amount at the time, especially considering that the Baron was not a wealthy man.

Every year since 1958 the German-American Steuben Parade has been held in New York City. It is one of the city’s largest parades and is traditionally followed by an Oktoberfest celebration in Central Park. Similar events take place in Chicago and Philadelphia. Chicago’s Steuben Day Parade was featured in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. To further honor von Steuben, the Steuben Society was founded in 1919 as an educational, fraternal, and patriotic organization of American citizens of German background. In the difficult post-WW I years the Society helped the German-American community reorganize.

Steubenville, Ohio, is named in the Baron’s honor. As well, numerous submarines, warships and ocean liners were named after him. A statue of the Baron stands in Lafayette Square opposite the White House in Washington, DC*. Even one of the cadet barracks buildings at Valley Forge Military Academy and College is named after Von Steuben. Really.

Steuben was cited by Randy Shilts in his book, Conduct Unbecoming, as an early example of a valuable homosexual in the military.

*I traipsed over to Lafayette Park yesterday afternoon to inspect the statue of Baron von Steuben. It’s a tall bronze life-size statue placed upon a high stone pedestal. The statue shows von Steuben in military dress uniform surveying the troops at Valley Forge. The monument, which stands opposite the White House, was erected in 1911 and sculpted by Albert Jaegers. At the rear of the pedestal is a medallion with the images of von Steuben's adopted aides-de-camp, William North and Benjamin Walker, facing one another.  It says:  "Colonel William North - Major Benjamin Walker - Aides and Friends of von Steuben". On each side of the pedestal are bronze Roman soldiers. Above the carved words “military instruction” on one side is a seated, helmeted Roman soldier “instructing” a naked youth (photo at left). Appropriate, no?

Check it out the next time you come to Washington DC.

*In 1796 Charles Adams was one of a group of men who frequented the theater in New York City and wrote critiques of what they saw for further distribution. Others in the group, called the Friendly Club, were John Wells, Elias Hicks, Samuel Jones, William Cutting and Peter Irving. This is noted in William Dunlap's "History of the American Theatre," published in 1832 (p. 193). Adams, whose father vowed never to see him again after Charles abandoned his wife and two daughters, drank himself to death in 1800, succumbing to alcoholism at the tender age of 30. Some scholars believe this was caused by his inability to deal with his homosexual leanings. Charles Adams, who streaked naked across the campus of Harvard during his student days, had a reputation as a rogue and renegade, and his family's wall of silence after his death may support that theory. Charles certainly spent much time in the company of men who engaged in homosexual activity. In researching this post, I enjoyed a cheap smile over the fact that the law office of young Adams was located on Little Queen Street (since renamed Cedar St. in the financial district).
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Prince Henry of Prussia

August 25, 2019, 7:15 pm
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A little-known fact of American history is that there had been a real possibility that our fledgling nation's first leader could have been a gay Prussian royal from the House of Hohenzollern.

Seriously.

Born Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig in Berlin, Prince Henry of Prussia (1726-1802) was the younger brother of Frederick the Great. Prince Henry was a distinguished soldier and statesman who in 1786 was backed by Alexander Hamilton, Baron von Steuben and other disgruntled American politicians as a cultured and liberal-minded candidate for “king” of the United States, when Americans were considering a constitutional monarchy form of government (George Washington had declined an offer to serve as "king"). Prince Henry was 60 years old at the time. In the end, a republic form of government won out, headed by a president, so the offer was not open long enough for Henry to accept, and George Washington was selected as the unanimous choice of the electors to serve as our first president.

While it might seem far-fetched that a Prussian man would be accepted by the American people as their leader, it must be recalled that without the military leadership of the Prussian Baron von Steuben, our continental army would likely not have prevailed against the British. Benjamin Franklin, while based in Paris, recommended Baron von Steuben to General George Washington, who brought von Steuben to Valley Forge. Von Steuben affected an astonishing military turnaround, whipping into shape Washington’s rag-tag band of soldiers.

Prince Henry (childless), Frederick the Great (childless), and Baron von Steuben (never married) all had one thing in common, and that is sexual relations with men (some historians promote an opinion that Alexander Hamilton's intense relationship with John Laurens included intimate physical relations). Benjamin Franklin was well aware of Baron von Steuben’s proclivity for young men but did not tell Washington that von Steuben was about to be run out of France for his “immoral” acts, which von Steuben never denied. Fellow countryman Prince Henry was also brazenly open about his sexual interest in young men. Both Prussians had advanced military skills, and Prince Henry led Prussia’s troops so successfully during the Seven Years' War that he never lost a battle. Baron von Steuben never married, but Prince Henry entered into a childless marriage of convenience, as was the custom of high-born homosexuals of the time.

Three of Prince Henry’s affairs with younger men are documented: the 17-year-old French émigré Count of Roche-Aymon, Major Christian Ludwig von Kaphengst (1743-1800) and an actor known as Blainville. It is known that Major Kaphengst exploited the prince's interest in him to lead a dissipated, wasteful life on a Prussian estate not far from Rheinsberg, Prince Henry's castle near Berlin. It was also reported that Henry often chose the officers in his regiment for their handsomeness rather than for their military competence.


After the death of his brother Frederick the Great, Henry became an advisor to his nephew, the new King Frederick William II of Prussia (regent 1786-1797), and during the last five years of his life advised his grand nephew, King Frederick William III, who reigned over Prussia from 1797 to 1840.

Sources:

Keith Stern’s Queers in History (2009)


Warren Johansson essay in Wayne R. Dynes’s Encyclopedia of Homosexuality

Wikipedia
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Billy Strayhorn

September 19, 2019, 5:31 am
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Out & Gay in the Jazz World

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) attended high school in Pittsburgh, while studying classical music on the side. His trio played daily on a local radio station, and he wrote a musical for his high school. He also wrote "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the A-Train", "Lotus Blossum" and “Lush Life,” all of which have become jazz classics. He started composing both words and music for "Lush Life" at age 16, which became a prophetic anthem for his life. He did indeed get to Paris, become a socialite and suffer from alcoholism. That such a world-weary lyric could come from the pen of a teenager is astounding.

At 23 his life changed completely when he met Duke Ellington, who was performing in Pittsburgh in 1938. Ellington was so impressed that he took him into his household, where he lived as part of the family. Ellington's nickname for Billy was "Sweet Pea." Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next 29 years as an arranger, composer, pianist and collaborator until his early death from esophageal cancer, the result of a lifetime of cigarette use. As Ellington described him, “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.”

Strayhorn was openly gay, but his association with Ellington helped protect him from discrimination. Until age 33 Strayhorn lived with his partner Aaron Bridgers, a jazz pianist and composer who moved to Paris in 1948. Until his death, Strayhorn then maintained a relationship with his subsequent partner, Bill Grove, who was Caucasian; however, they kept separate apartments, likely as the result of Strayhorn's higher profile and interracial prejudices of the day.

Strayhorn significantly influenced the career of Lena Horne, who recorded many of his songs. Strayhorn’s compositions are known for the bittersweet sentiment and classically infused harmonies that set him apart from Ellington.

Strayhorn to the rescue:

In a dispute over royalties in late 1940, ASCAP forbid its members from broadcasting any of their compositions over the radio. But Ellington, one of ASCAP’S most celebrated composers, needed radio broadcasts to promote record sales, which paid his orchestra’s salaries. Strayhorn rallied to save the day. During a hurried cross-country train ride to join Ellington in Los Angeles, Strayhorn (not an ASCAP member), got almost no sleep for six straight days, writing song after song after song. Strayhorn’s prolific, engaging new works kept the Ellington Orchestra afloat for months. When it was time for a new radio theme (Ellington’s own “Sepia Panorama” was still forbidden on the airwaves), Ellington chose Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train,” premiering it in early 1941. The rest is jazz history.

Queen Latifah (who lives in the Hollywood Hills with her partner Jeanette Jenkins) sings “Lush Life,” written when Strayhorn was a young, unseasoned song writer. Most performers say it’s difficult to sing and sounds like no other song in the standard repertoire.

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Prince Andrew of Greece

October 6, 2019, 3:32 pm
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Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh, had a mother who was born profoundly deaf and a father who was bisexual. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece (1882-1944), was a disgraced military commander, charged with treason for failure to carry out orders in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1921) and subsequently stripped of his royal titles. Blamed for the loss of Greek territory in that disastrous war, he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. His wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg*, arranged for intervention by British King George V, who negotiated for Andrew’s release and ultimate rescue. The photo at right shows Prince Andrew and Princess Alice in 1905, two years into their ill-fated marriage.

Andrew had always lived a lascivious lifestyle, carrying on one affair after another with both men and women, so it is not surprising that he largely ignored his wife and children. After they drifted apart, Alice sent Prince Philip (at the age of nine) to England to be cared for by his relatives, the Mountbattens, while she and her four daughters returned to Germany. Prince Andrew lived out the rest of his life in exile in Monaco, all the while continuing a string of bisexual affairs. Prince Andrew, who had been near-sighted from his early days, was always seen wearing glasses, but in later years he sported a monocle as a dashing accessory. Before things fell apart, Andrew, tall and good looking, cut a fine figure with Alice of Battenberg, one of Europe’s loveliest princesses, as the photo attests. They were living in Corfu when their only son (their fifth and youngest child), Prince Philip, today's consort of Queen Elizabeth II, was born in 1921.

Andrew (shown in painting at left) had grown up the son of King George I (a German speaking Danish Prince and King of Greece) and the Russian Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinova. After his father was assassinated, Andrew’s brother Constantine became King of Greece. Unfortunately, Constantine was forced to abdicate because of his neutral stance during WW I, and Prince Andrew and his family lived in exile in Switzerland for three years, until his brother was reinstated in 1920. In the following year Prince Philip was born on Corfu.

Unfortunately, Andrew died before his son married the English Queen Elizabeth II in 1947, having succumbed to a heart ailment. He died at the Hotel Metropole in Monaco in 1944 and is buried in the gardens of Tatoi, the Greek royal residence to the north of Athens. Just before his marriage to Elizabeth in 1947, Prince Philip became a British subject, taking his mother's surname, Mountbatten, thus renouncing his right to the Greek and Danish thrones. A more detailed chronology of Prince Andrew’s life can be discerned from the video at the end of this post.

Note: The current British Prince Andrew (born 1960) was named after his bisexual Greek grandfather. It is widely known that Prince Andrew is the favorite son of Queen Elizabeth, in spite of all that scandalous Fergie business.

*Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was born profoundly deaf at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great grandmother Queen Victoria. She grew to become one of Europe’s most beautiful princesses, adept at lip reading and speaking German and English. At the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, Alice met Prince Andrew, ultimately marrying him in Darmstadt, Germany, the very next year. She spent her early married life in the turbulent political arena of Greece. After being ignored by her husband and shamed by his blatant affairs and political disgrace, she suffered a severe nervous breakdown and eventually entered the Greek Orthodox Church to became a nun, founding a female religious order. She creating quite a stir as a nun who chained smoked and played canasta. Princess Alice lived out her final years in Britain and died at Buckingham Palace, where she had been invited to live after the fall of King Constantine II of Greece (her brother-in-law) and the imposition of military rule there in 1967. Upon her death in 1969 she was interred in the royal crypt at Windsor Castle, but her wish to be buried in Jerusalem was finally realized in 1988, when her remains were transferred to a crypt below a convent in Gethsemane.

Princess Alice had attended the royal wedding of Queen Elizabeth II to her son Prince Philip in 1947, but her four daughters (Prince Philip’s sisters) were conspicuously excluded, because all of them had married German nobles, three of them high ranking Nazi officers. Oddly, Prince Philip never told Princess Diana that his mother had been born severely deaf, all the more astonishing in light of the tireless work Princess Diana did on behalf of the deaf community in Britain.

In this photo a young Prince Philip is shown holding his mother's hand. Philip learned sign language to be able to communicate with his mother. Prince Andrew is shown seated and surrounded by his four daughters. Philip was the only male child in the immediate family.


Prince Philip’s German ancestry was always problematic. When his sister Cécile died in a plane crash in 1937, her funeral was attended by Hermann Göring. There are photographs of the then 16-year-old Prince Philip at the funeral, surrounded by relatives in SS and brownshirt uniforms. Philip’s sister Sophia was photographed sitting opposite Hitler at the wedding of Hermann and Emmy Göring. Sophia herself was married to Prince Christopher of Hesse-Cassel, an SS Colonel attached to Himmler's personal staff. Their eldest son, Karl Adolf (Prince Philip’s nephew), was named in Hitler's honor. During WW I the Battenbergs “translated” their name from German to the English word Mountbatten (remember that Prince Philip’s mother was a Battenberg; "berg" in German means "mountain"). Accordingly, Prince Philip anglicized his name to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (the German House of Battenberg was a branch of the House of Hesse), to distance himself from his actual German family name of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (on his father’s side). Similarly, the House of Hanover (German) changed its name to the House of Windsor. The late Queen Mother was strongly opposed to the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth to Philip, but eventually gave in to her daughter’s entreaties.

Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh and his young bride, Queen Elizabeth 11, in 1947.


The British royal family has spent more than sixty years trying to downplay or disguise Prince Philip’s infamous heritage. Queen Elizabeth II’s own grandmother, Queen Mary, had been born a German princess, and the British Royal family’s strong German roots caused uneasiness during the two world wars. Hoping to sweep all this German business under the carpet for good, in 1960 Queen Elizabeth II decreed by special order that all of her children and grandchildren were to use the name Mountbatten-Windsor (which sounds a lot less German than Battenberg-Hanover). Thus the recently married Prince William has the official name: William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor.


Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg



Prince Philip’s cousin, Prince Charles Edward, had a career that further embarrassed England. Charles Edward was born into the British royal family at Claremont House (Surrey, England) in 1884. He accepted a German dukedom and found himself fighting for the Kaiser in World War I. Later he was deprived of all his British titles and branded a traitor. But the worst was his assistance in Hitler's rise to power, so Prince Charles Edward ended his days as a convicted Nazi. Charles Edward had been Queen Victoria's favorite grandson, and he was first cousin to three European monarchs: English King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Nicholas II, Russia’s last Tsar. Unfortunately, Queen Victoria made a decision that ruined his life by decreeing that Prince Charles Edward would become the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the German principality from which Victoria’s husband Albert originated. At 16 years of age and speaking no German, Charles Edward left England to become Carl Eduard, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, with 13 castles in Germany and Austria, hunting lodges, hotels, a power station, tens of thousands of acres of farmland in Bavaria and a duchy with an income worth £17 million pounds at today's value. In no time flat the German Kaiser married him off to his own niece, Victoria. In retrospect, I’m sure Charles Edward realized that sometimes it’s better to stand up to one’s grandmother, even if she is the queen.

While things are much more progressive these days, royals are perpetual sources of scandal and gossip. Prince Harry, who for years supplied the tabloid press with ample fodder, recently married Meghan Markle (a bi-racial commoner), and just a year ago Lord Ivar Mountbatten married his male partner, James Coyle. This was the British royal family's first ever same sex wedding (held in the Mountbatten family's private chapel). Fifty-something Lord Ivar Mountbatten is a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, and like the Queen, he is a direct descendant of Queen Victoria. He is also a great-nephew of Earl Louis Mountbatten, who was Prince Philip's uncle.


Sources:

Wikipedia
Vanity Fair
http://crownstiarasandcoronets.blogspot.com/2016/07/princess-alice-of-battenberg-princess.html
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