Letters
To Charles Oates, November 15, 1871
Charles Oates was a fellow student of Trinity Hall, and, like Carpenter, homosexual. The friendship and correspondence, begun at Cambridge, continued until Oates death in 1891 – Oates becoming perhaps the chief confident for Carpenter’s feelings.
Nov. 15 ’71 Trin. Hall. Cambridge
Dear Oates,
I wish you would answer my letters. What has become of you? Some people speculate that you are going to be married, but I am inclined to think that too good to be true. You must write & let me know about yourself; I do not want you to disappear into the cold outer space without leaving some sign or symbol. Is it true that you are thinking of going abroad and, if so, couldn’t you show up here for a little time beforehand? I have made the acquaintance of a man who often strikes me as like you; he has very quick affections & warm feelings & often feels lonely enough up here in this somewhat chilly atmosphere & then he gets fits of extreme depression, which I am afraid is like you too, and cannot push them off for a long time & passes sleepless nights & unprofitable days. It seems too bad that people should be tormented by such insubstantial devils. I often think what fools we are not to league ourselves together by closer bonds of friendship against such evil onslaught (for all the devils in the world would vanish – for me – if I had but one person to help me against them) but as it is we live in a powdery granular state of society where no man is organically connected with others, but each man has to draw his own life & support from no one (as you delight to say) but himself; and so the weight of the world is many times trebled.
I cannot write more now
farewell, ever yours Edward Carpenter
Charles Oates
Edward Carpenter's Last Letter¹
Mountside, Guildford, Surrey
11 Aug 1927²
My dear George Pearson³
It was good to hear from you some time ago and that you and Mrs. P. are quite well in health. May you long continue so! I am a rare old Croc now, being over 82 - but what can you expect?
It is good to hear the boys have got a motor car, and when I come over (to) Sheffield I shall come & see you, but I doubt that will not be very soon. I was born in 1844, so you are quite a chicken compared with me!!
Love and blessings to you any how
Your affectionate
Edward Carpenter
Remember to Richard Jarvis when you write.
George Merrill sends his love.
Notes:
We are grateful to Sheffield City Archives for their kind permission to display this letter. Ownership of the letter remains with the Sheffield Archives. It may not be copied without permission. Ref. Carpenter Collection MSS.333 - catalogued as ‘Edward Carpenter's Last Letter.
The letter is written a few weeks before Carpenter's 83rd birthday on August 29th 1927.
George Pearson was part of the Sheffield Socialists of the early 1880s. Carpenter wrote in ‘My Days and Dreams' of John Furniss and George Pearson striding across the 5 or 6 miles of Moor into Sheffield to speak at the Pump or the Monolith, then striding out again in the middle of the night (My Days and Dreams, Edward Carpenter, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1916, p133). When by 1880 the co-operative venture by the Ruskinite St. George's Guild at St. George's Farm at Totley had begun to fall apart, it was George Pearson, through Carpenter's suggestion , who took on the tenancy of the farm. In this Pearson was again aided by his friend John Furniss, who had himself set up a small utopian community at Moorhay Farm. The Pearson family continued over the years to farm at Moorhay and Totley. Visiting in September 1929, Henry Nevinson found that Pearson had finally managed to buy Moorhay Farm, and, though he himself was now crippled by rheumatism, the Pearsons, growing fruit and vegetables at both Moorhay and at Totley had finally begun to prosper (Edward Carpenter A Life of Liberty and Love, Sheila Rowbotham, Verso, 2008: p440)
Edith Vance Letters, Part 1
In the years that followed the Oscar Wilde's conviction, with their increased atmosphere of fear and vulnerability for homosexuals, and at a time when so many people had gone to ground, Edward Carpenter was increasingly approached as a source of support and advice. This was particularly so following the publication of his books that dealt specifically with homosexuality.
The following series of letters, currently in private ownership, are an example of his substantial correspondence of this kind. He writes back to a Miss Vance (original letters not known), firstly following her enquiry in 1913 concerning his pamphlet on homosexuality, and then, in 1914, to give her advice concerning the arrest and forthcoming trial of an unnamed individual, whom Miss Vance was assisting.
The concluding letter of the correspondence, written after the conclusion of the trial, is below.
Miss Edith Maurice Vance (1860-1930), is described as a free thinker. Her name appears within the minutes of the Legitimation League in 1895 (notes kindly supplied by Sheila Rowbotham), the League then agitating for equal rights for illegitimate children. In 1906, she is listed as secretary of the National Secular Society (appearing as a representative within the attendance list for the funeral of co-operator and secularist George Jacob Hollyoake).
Letter 1
MILLTHORPE, HOLMESFIELD, NEAR SHEFFIELD.
Dear Miss Vance
I have no more of the U.P.¹ left - so I return you the P.order (sic.). You will however I think be able to obtain them at Hendersons bookshop 66 Charing Cross Rd².
The pamphlet is also reprinted as a chapter in my "Intermediate Sex"³ - see circular enclosed.
Yours ffly (sic.)
Edwd. (sic.) Carpenter
27 Aug /13
1. An Unknown People - pamphlet by Edward Carpenter. Reprinted from the Reformer. London, A. And H.B. Bonner, 1897. Second edition, 1905. Details as listed in Carpenter's My Days and Dreams (1916), Appendix ІІ, Bibliography.
2. Hendersons, a ‘political bookshop', became known as "the Bomb Shop", and in the 1920's was proud to be the only socialist bookshop in the West End. Defiantly painted in red and gold, the walls bearing the names of renown radicals from the past, it had been designed and decorated by the socialist painter Walter Crane (see the reminiscences of Reg Groves in The Balham Group - How Trotskyism Began, Pluto, London, 1974, Ch. 3, and on line at www.marxists.org/history/etol ). In 1934 the ailing ‘Hendersons' was bought by the wealthy communist Eva Collet Reckitt and was reopened as ‘Collets', which remained in business until 1985 (see Radical Bookshop History by Five Leaves Publications on line at www.fiveleaves.co.uk/radical_bookselling.html).
3. Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex: a Study of some Transitional Types of Men and Women. First edition. London, Sonnenschein; Manchester, Clarke, 1908. As listed in My Days and Dreams, Appendix ІІ.
Letter 2
MILLTHORPE, HOLMESFIELD, NEAR SHEFFIELD.
12 June 1914
Dear Miss Vance
How preposterous these dicta of the Magistrates are, and what ignorance they imply!
I am sending you Weininger¹ (see pp. 2,3,7,19 etc).). My Krafft Ebing² & Moll³ are in German which probably would not be of use to ‘counsel'. However if you wire I will send them.
It would be a good plan for you to go to Jones & Evans, booksellers, 77 Queen Str (sic.) : Cheapside. They keep or deal in all this class of book, and their Mr. Wilson is well up in the literature. They would probably have The Sexual Question³ª by A. Forel - which is a useful book (see pp. 243-7 etc.) For Counsel Mr. Harold Benjamin, K.C, of 5 Pump Court, E.C, is to be recommended.
Hoping these few notes, & the book, will be of use.
Yours very truly
Edwd. (sic.) Carpenter
PS. Ribmans book shop is I think 125 Shaftesbury Avenue.
1. Otto Weininger, Sex and Character is quoted in Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex, Appendix.
2. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 7th edition, Stuttgart, 1892 is quoted in The Intermediate Sex, Appendix.
3. Albert Moll, his Die Konträre Sexualempfindung, 2nd edition, Berlin 1893, is quoted in The Intermediate Sex, Appendix.
3a. Auguste Forel, The Sexual Question, published 1905.
From Edward Carpenter to the free thinker Miss Edith Maurice Vance (1860-1930).
Letter 3
MILLTHORPE, HOLMESFIELD,
NEAR SHEFFIELD.
Dear Miss Vance
I have received the Weininger¹ all right, thanks, and am glad to hear of the acquittal.
Would you write to Mr. C. Kains Jackson² of 10 The Green Richmond about the British Society of Psychiatry³? He would send you some of its papers. I think you w.d (sic.) be interested in it.
↗ mentioning my name.
Yours very truly
Edw.d (sic.) Carpenter
15 July 1914
1.Otto Weininger, Sex and Character - previously lent by Carpenter to aid the defence of the forthcoming court case (see Letter 2).
2.Charles Kains Jackson (1857-1933); an English poet closely associated with ‘the Uranian School', editor from 1888-1894 of the monthly magazine Artist and Journal of Home Culture promoting a homoerotic Hellenic ideal (London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914, Matt Cook, Cambridge University Press, 2003: p127). Kains Jackson went on to work with George Ives and others in creating groupings, such as ‘The Octave', supportive of Uranians and their cause. He became an active member of the B.S.S.S.P.. (Edward Carpenter A Life of Liberty and Love, Sheila Rowbotham, Verso, 2008: pp332-3).
3.Carpenter played as central role in the formation, in August 1913, of the new British Society of Psychiatry - its ad hoc committee including Kains Jackson and Ives. The Society initially formed to enable a meeting where Magnus Hirshfeld could address a group interested in homosexual law reform, at the Hotel Cecil on August 12th. At the inaugural meeting on July 8th 1914 (one week before this letter to Miss Vance) the name was changed to the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology (B.S.S.S.P) (ibid. p333). The Society continued to provide an arena for the discussion of homosexual concerns - Carpenter's paper Some Friends of Walt Whitman, here given its web premier, was read before the B.S.S.S.P. in 1924.