The Gay Nineties

I'm borrowing this from a post I made to another blog in 2011

The following photos are of some of the young men who were working boys at Paresis Hall (aka Columbia Hall), one of up to six New York male for male brothels in the late 19th century. It was located on Fifth & Bowery, off of Coopers Square. The photos date from 1890 - 1899 and were either sold or given to clients.

Billy Walsh

Francis "The Horse" Kane

Amos John

Charley Ford

George Horn

Arnold Doyle

Johny Gibson

Danny Moore

Nathaniel "The Kid" Cullen

Jimmy Smith

Willy "The Bull" Pearson

Joshua

Raymond

Tim Kelly

Tommy O'Rourke

The last photo is apparently of the boys masquerading as working boys of another kind. If this is in fact a true photo, it's obvious that some of the boys were quite young, in their early teens. Despite our moral perspective, I suppose it's something that shouldn't be all that surprising given the poverty of the time. Even putting aside poverty, many children left school by the time they were 14, often earlier, (the 1900 U.S. census reported only 519,000 students in public high schools, which was double what it was in 1890) and began working, taking on what we now consider to be adult roles. Something which would have carried over into areas like prostitution.

I first saw most of these photos a few years ago on a blog. I believe it was Queerpitcher which, unfortunately, is now closed. In addition to these photos there were others, including those of clients like E.C. Bald, the cyclist.

The photos of both boys and clients had inscriptions on the back, written by one of the boys named Jacob Miller from whose collection most of these came, with names, sexual preferences and sizes (I don't mean shoe size.) You can see transcripts of two of these at the following links. A word of caution, some of the language is NSFW

Two clients of Paresis Hall

Another working boy

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876 - 1950)

Hiroshi Yoshida's Wikipedia page

Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944)

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

---

Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963)
In a Dark Time

Thomas Pollock Anshutz (1851 - 1912)

All images have full size views. Just click on any one

See his bio at Archives of American Art

Thomas Eakins (1844 - 1916): The male figure

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going,
North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf
or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

---

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
We two boys together clinging

Eakins, of course, painted and photographed more than the male figure, but he captures its beauty, particularly in his boxer paintings. This applies equally to the final painting of his friend and student John Laurie Wallace, who in this pose isn't the same idealized figure as those in the wrestling or boxing paintings.

Charles Demuth (1883 - 1935)

O to have my life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on,
To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports,
A ship itself, (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air,)
A swift and swelling ship, full of rich words—full of joys.

---

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)
Poem of Joys

"Demuth was not a flaming queen, in fact he was rather a discreet gay, but if he could not place his deepest sexual predilections in the open, he could still make art from them. Seen from our distance, that of a pornocratic culture so drenched in genital imagery that sly hints about forbidden sex hardly compel attention, the skill with which he did this might seem almost quaint."

The complete article is here

Konstantin Somov (1869 - 1939)

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen
I would like to watch you
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway

again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

---

Margaret Atwood
Variations on the Word Sleep