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“A Race of Born Pederasts”: Sir Richard Burton, Homosexuality, and the Arabs

2003; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0890549032000069131

1477-2663

Colette Colligan,

Marriage and Sexual Relationships

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Burton held positions with the Indian Army and the Foreign Office, during which time he supported English imperial rule in India (McLynn 48), the conquest of eastern Africa (120), and the annexation of Egypt (328). 2. Burton's version of "The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad" includes vulgar references to genitalia, female nudity, and flagellation (1.90–97). Even a favourable reviewer for The Bat was shocked by Burton's translation of the tale: "The conduct of the three fair ladies is decidedly eccentric; their language, to put it mildly, is copious, expressive, and direct in the extreme; their customs, in the phraseology of the burlesque, are very peculiar; and very improper is their behaviour as judged by our occidental standards" (876). 3. The debate about the pornography of Burton's translation emerged shortly after its publication. The Pall Mall Gazette was at the centre of the controversy with its vitriolic condemnation of Burton's new translation. In a September 14th article "Pantagruelism or Pornography," John Morley (under the pseudonym Sigma) repudiates Burton's claim that his work aims to instruct the student of anthropology and orientalism. Denying the work's scholarship, he asks: "Students! Students of what? Does any one need to be told that the vast majority of them are simply students of what I shall call […] pornography?" (2). See Dane Kennedy (2000) on the orientalist nature of these debates about the unexpurgated Arabian Nights. 4. F.F. Arbuthnot collaborated with Burton on numerous translations along the lines of The Oriental Translation Fund (Wright 86), established in 1828 as a sister organisation of the Royal Asiatic Society for the "advancement of Oriental learning" (Report 1). Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, owned an extensive collection of French and Italian erotic literature and was one of Burton's intimate friends (McLynn 328). In 1859, he introduced Burton to Frederick Hankey, his Paris agent who purchased erotic works for Milnes and ingeniously undermined the vigilance of English customs (Pope-Hennessy 118). In 1861, he also introduced Burton to the young Algernon Swinburne, who, owing to Milnes's influence, developed an obsession with the Marquis de Sade (Pope-Hennessy 132) and likely contributed The Whippingham Papers, a work on flagellation clandestinely published in 1887 (Mendes 9). 5. Besides Burton's translation of The Thousand Nights and One Night (1885–86) as well as The Supplemental Nights (1886–88), the Kama Shastra Society published The Kama Sutra (1883), The Ananga Ranga (1885), The Perfumed Garden of the Sheik Nefzaoui (1886), The Beharistan (1887), and The Gulistan (1888). 6. Many imitations of Burton's translations of Arab texts followed, but two of the most notable late imitations were Marriage—Love and Women Amongst the Arabs (1896) and The Old Man Young Again (1898–99). In spite of the initial interest in Indian erotic literature, these translations did not elicit as much imitation and reproduction. The Kama Shastra was first printed in 1873, but limited to four copies. The Kama Shastra Society reprinted it in 1885 as The Ananga Ranga, after first printing The Kama Sutra in 1883. Attached to the back of the British Library copy of The Kama Sutra are letters dating from 1883 from Arbuthnot, the collector Henry Spenser Ashbee, the reviewer J. Knight, and a Paris bookseller. The letters disclose the exchange of the book in London, its sale in bookshops like Bernard Quartich's in Piccadilly, and its migration to the continent. Paris, a French translation by Isidore Liseux of Arbuthnot and Burton's The Kama Sutra appeared in 1885, but no other translations appeared until 1910 with the publication of Le Livre d'Amour de L'Orient, which includes both The Ananga Ranga and La Fleur Lascive Orientale. 7. John Addington Symonds (1840–93), Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), and Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) were all early English theorists of homosexuality who rejected pathological or morbid theories in favour of congenital ones. Their major works on homosexuality are, respectively, A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883), Sexual Inversion (1897), and The Intermediate Sex (1908). 8. There are numerous biographies on Burton; Mary Lovell's (1998) is the most recent and detailed. 9. Edward Said (1978), for instance, discusses Burton's orientalism. He suggests that despite Burton's obvious interest and knowledge about Arab culture, he elevates himself to a position of supremacy over the Orient. As he writes, "In that position his [Burton's] individuality perforce encounters, and indeed merges with, the voice of Empire" (196). 10. Historical evidence weakens Michel Foucault's thesis that homosexual identity did not emerge in Europe until the 1870s. From the Molly Houses in the eighteenth century, homosexual communities have existed and defined themselves collectively and individually through sexual difference. Two nineteenth-century examples of English works aware of homosexual identity and community include The Phoenix of Sodom (1813) and The Yokel's Preceptor (c.1855). The first is a defence of the owner of a male brothel on Vere Street raided by the police in 1810. In this defence, he reveals the practices of the Vere Street coterie like the mock marriage ceremonies in the "Chapel" that features "bride maids" and "bride men" who then consummate their marriage (10). It also reveals that these male brothels are widespread in London (14). The Yokel's Preceptor (c.1855) describes male prostitutes and identifies these "poufs" as different on account of their effeminacy, fashionable dress, and walk (Hyde 120–21). 11. In The Romance of Lust, sodomy proliferates, but is neither restricted to men or suggestive of homosexual identity. As Steven Marcus (1964) argues, this novel is a classic example of "pornotopia" that displays every type of sexual act (274). As for My Secret Life, Weeks argues that the author experiments with anal sex with a man "after years of compulsive sex with all manner of women," but "there is no suggestion that his own basic self-concept was in any way disturbed" (Sex 108). 12. "The Sub-Umbra" in the The Pearl and "The Secret Life of Linda Brent" in The Cremorne are two stories that are preoccupied with sodomy and sexual relations between men. However, both stories conceal their central concern. A classic example of the Sedwickian triangle, the first story disrupts the homosexual desire between two boys by introducing a girl into their sex play. Two boys who have intercourse with a girl at the same time, one vaginally and one anally, focus on the sensation of their "pricks throbbing against each other in a most delicious manner, with only the thin membrane of the anal canal between them" (101). The second story, a parody of Harriet Jacobs's slave narrative, features a black slave girl who disrupts the homoerotic desire between two white slave owners. Operating within a Sedwickian triangle that incorporates the frisson of race, the two men initially attempt to rape the slave girl, but one man finishes by sodomizing the other (15). 13. The Cleveland Street homosexual scandal broke in 1889 when police discovered a male brothel that specialized in telegraph boys and serviced gentlemen. The incident became a public scandal when peers like Lord Arthur Somerset were implicated. For further information about the scandal and the subsequent trails, see Montgomery Hyde (1970) and William A. Cohen (1996). 14. Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were two male transvestites who were arrested in 1870 and charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy. Their trial, which lasted three days in 1871, aroused immense public interest as doctors discussed the physical evidence and disputed whether or not they had committed sodomy. See Hyde and Cohen for further information. 15. Ambrose Tardieu wrote Etude Medical-Legal sure les Attendants aux Moue's (1857) in which he pathologies sodomy as a disease. 16. The publishing history of The Sins of the Cities is uncertain and complex, but incorporated people with whom Burton had contact. Mendes suggests that James Campbell Reddie—known to Burton—likely wrote the original manuscript first published by Lazenby (215). Lazenby then wrote the sequel, Letters from Laura and Eveline (1883). 17. James Nelson (2000) has recently uncovered a wealth of information about Smithers' clandestine publishing activities and his epistolary relationship to the Burtons. While best known for publishing Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, and The Savoy (1896), his early publishing career revolved around the Burtons. He began corresponding with Burton after the publication of the Arabian Nights, to which he had subscribed (Nelson 11). Soon, they began collaborating on upscale, scholarly, and unexpurgated translations of classical authors, such as The Priapeia (1890) and The Carmina of Catullus (1894). Smithers himself was a frequent translator of erotic works that were published with his partner and printer Harry Sidney Nichols under the guise and protection of the Erotika Biblion Society of Athens. Between 1888 and 1894, Smithers and Nichols collaborated on various underground projects. They were involved in the production of a number of obscene works together, the most important titles including Gynecocracy (1893) and Oscar Wilde's Teleny (1893). They had connections with other underground publishers of obscenity such as Edward Avery in London and Charles Carrington in Paris. After 1891, they also opened shops in Soho, still the centre of the underground trade at the end of the century. Their partnership apparently ended when Nichols's interests deviated from the expensive, upscale obscenity that Smithers preferred (Nelson 43; Lawrence 6). 18. I am indebted to Mark Turner for drawing my attention to the similarities between the terminal essays in Sins of the Cities and Burton's Terminal Essay on "Pederasty." 19. The Athenaeum Club is an exclusive English gentleman scholar's club on Pall Mall Street in London that was established in 1824 as an association of distinguished writers, scientists, and artists. Burton, Symonds, and Monckton-Milnes were all members. 20. Symonds had sent copies of his works to Gosse who in turn lent them to James (Hyde 101; Grosskurth 270). 21. See 48 & 49 Vic. Cap. 69. 22. Louise Jackson (2000) notes that there was a "rent-boy scandal" around 1885; a document related to this scandal may have been the infamous report on sodomy to which Burton and Labouchère refer. Richard Dellamora (1990), offering another theory for Labouchère's motives, suggests that he promoted the amendment in order to punish the wealthy homosexual dandy who discomfited his own aristocratic masculinity (202). 23. Stephen O. Murray (1998) suggests that the association between Arabs and homosexuality was not unique to Burton, but was reported among other Europeans (204–21). 24. Nineteenth-century obscenity proliferated harem fantasies about the violent commingling of white women, Arab sultans, and black slaves. See, for example, The Lustful Turk (1828) and Moslem Erotism (c.1906). 25. On January 15th, 1887, The Academy reviewed the tenth volume of Burton's translation, drawing attention to the Terminal Essay, but refrained from commenting on its contents. 26. The booksellers and publishers, Robson and Kerslake, were involved in underground obscenity from c.1873–c.1900 (Mendes 15–16). Isabel Burton mentioned them among other booksellers who might sell a fraudulent version of The Scented Garden (Lovell 779). 27. The British Library holds a copy of the autograph edition that Liseux probably used as the basis of his edition. There are handwritten editorial corrections throughout, and the semi-erotic illustrations are scratched out. One illustration showing an Arab man exposing his penis to another man is vehemently destroyed, an act that suggests the editor's discomfort with the subject matter (65). 28. Karl Ulrichs (1825–95), a German theorist of homosexuality in the 1860s, influenced Symonds as well as Burton with his congenital theories about "Urnings" (Weeks, Coming 48). 29. Of the French in Algeria, Burton wrote that "French mismanagement beats ours holler, and their hate and jealousy of us makes their colonies penal settlements to us" (qtd. in Wright 220). Burton preferred Tunis to Morocco because it was not as influenced by French culture (Lovell 722). 30. There was a split between public expectation and private practice regarding women's exposure to purportedly obscene material. Public decorum may have demanded that women refrain from reading questionable texts, but they could indulge privately without opprobrium. It seems that upper-class women, such as Isabel Burton, had greater and more unregulated access to obscene material than other classes for they could access family libraries with relative privacy without the scrutiny of booksellers or passers-bys on questionable streets. See Kennedy (1997) and Lovell for a discussion of Isabel Burton's active involvement in the editing, reading, and censorship of Burton's obscene productions. 31. Holywell Street, near the Strand, was notorious in the 1850s and 1860s as the centre of London's underground trade in obscenity. It is mentioned in parliamentary debates prior to the passing of the Obscene Publications Bill. See Lynda Nead (2000) for a fuller discussion of Holywell Street in the nineteenth century. 32. Burton's translations of Arab erotica stimulated English discourse on homosexuality, but were also culturally influential in other ways. The Perfumed Garden, for instance, was the object of obscene appropriation, but disengaged from English homosexual discourse. As early as 1886, Avery pirated Burton's translation of the text (Mendes 464). Around 1906, the first few chapters of his translation were also appended to the harem fantasy Moslem Erotism, or Adventures of an American Woman in Constantinople. In this work, the extracts follow a very short 24-page orientalist heterosexual fantasy about an American woman who willingly prostitutes herself in a Turkish harem. Burton's translation is thus reappropriated for its orientalist sexuality, but recontextualized within a heterosexual framework. In 1907, The Perfumed Garden was again reappropriated for English pornographic purposes, but not for its homosexual content: Carrington privately published his own translation of the work to reassert French textual authority. In his Foreword, he repudiates the English editions by Burton and Avery as piracies of Liseux's French translation (Mendes 465). His translation reclaims The Perfumed Garden for the French to counter its annexation by second-rate English publishers of obscenity.