Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (30 page)

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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Page 95
For a short time after arriving in Honolulu, Stoddard stayed at the imposing Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Beretania, but he soon moved into a "tumbledown old rookery" near the cemetery on Nuuannu Street. It was apparently as much of a Gothic ruin as the "Eyrie" had been, and Stoddard began calling his new home "Spook Hall." Its former owners had supposedly been murdered there, and the husband of its current owner, Mrs. Frank Harris (''Lady Spook"), had recently drowned. It all seemed somehow appropriate to Stoddard's mood. "I had but few acquaintances and cared but little to see them there," he recalled
(ITD
117). He looked upon his last years in San Francisco as a soul-searing time, and "Spook Hall" seemed to provide a salutary seclusion.
Stoddard made some outings, of course. Every Sunday morning he went to mass at the cathedral; and if he wanted to watch the swimmers, he could go to Kapena Pool or Waikiki beach. Then there were Professor Berger's band concerts at Emma Square, where Stoddard could rub elbows with the highly decorative youths who strolled around in tennis suits. If he wanted to leave Honolulu altogether, he could always take the interisland steamer over to Maui and visit his family. Stoddard's parents ran the general store at Waihee, where Sarah's husband, Parker Makee, superintended the family sugarcane plantation.
The pleasure that suited Stoddard best was falling in love. Although some Honolulu gossips linked him to Mrs. Harris, the widow with whom he appeared to be living in sin, Stoddard's feelings were truly for Willie Lawler, a young man who lived at the hotel in Maui. To the best of his ability, this young man repaid Stoddard's attentions during their brief and furtive affair. One problem, however, was lack of privacy. Another was the "Kid"'s inexperience, which became evident when Stoddard took him to Waihee for a visit with Sarah and Parker. "Twice during our stay he had his own way with me," Stoddard wrote in his diary, "and had he been other than the immature youngster that he is, it would have reminded me of other days and other hours which were warmer than these in spite of the higher latitude" (D 5 Aug. 1882).
24
Toward the end of the summer of 1882, Stoddard spotted clouds on the horizon that caused him, as usual, to throw up his hands in despair. The immediate problem was that Mrs. Harris was closing "Spook Hall" and leaving town in September. Then his contract with the
Press
was to expire on October 31, and it seemed doubtful that it would be renewed. Finally, the Lawlers were talking about going to Australia, and Stoddard hated the thought of losing Willie. What will become of me, he
 
Page 96
asked a friend in California, Theodore Dwight, who now held the prestigious and lucrative post of librarian for the State Department in Washington, D.C., and who tried to entice Stoddard into coming East and moving in with him. "I can house you so long as you will be housed. Coffee in thin porcelain shall be served to you at your bedside by the African Sphinx, James the black and speechless, called by some the 'Mind Reader.'. . . You shall have incitements to work and all the facilities of quills and paper. It is too happy a dream."
25
Dwight's offer was not tempting enough.
"I don't seem to care to return to the world," Stoddard had written to Father Hudson before going to Hawaii. He had conceded, however, that he had to go somewhere. "I do not yet know what I shall do but I try to rest content and trust that the way will be opened for me."
26
Once again the way was opened for Stoddard in a rather miraculous fashion. Further up on Nuuannu Street was a large, airy house, with a sweeping view of the town and the harbor, that was occupied by three fairly young and well-to-do bachelors who were looking for a fourth to help with housekeeping expenses. Since they all worked downtown during weekdays, Stoddard might have all the quiet he needed for his writing. In fact, life at "Bachelor's Bungalow" (or "Stag-Racket Bungalow," as he called it) solved Stoddard's major problem; for he found that his financial worries could be largely forgotten. Austin Whiting, the wealthy young lawyer who acted as head of the house, was willing to subsidize him from month to month, as an advance on his next book.
But loving companionship was lacking. As Stoddard wrote to Will Stuart, apparently in reply to some remark about Oscar Wilde: "Oscar Wilde! Shall I ever find him in this vague world? If you see him before I do, and of course you will, please say the unutterable things that stick in my throatbecause here there is no one to spoon with, or to gush over, or to care a fig for and I am out of practice."
27
Nevertheless when Stoddard moved into his new home on September 2, he wrote in his diary that night: "Life is promiseful, and I thank God and the Saints that I am here at last" (D 1882).
It might seem odd that Stoddard felt he would fit comfortably at "Stag-Racket Bungalow," since he had so little in common with his housemates. Whereas he was a "prematurely gray, prematurely bald, sad-eyed, soft-hearted fellow," a forty-year-old, introverted, nervous homosexual, his fellows were much younger men who were "more or less wild," nonreligious, nonliterary, extroverted heterosexuals.
28
In
 
Page 97
addition to Whiting, there were William Sproull, who worked in MacFarlane's shipping office, and Charles Deering, who worked at the Bishop Bank. It was they and their friends who provided all the "stag-racket": poker parties, which usually included a great deal of yelling and drinking and swearing and which almost always ended with someone doing a drunken hula-kai. Sometimes Stoddard would sit at the piano with his drink, plinking out a popular ditty and trying to get into the spirit of things. Other times he would escape to the darkness of the veranda, where he would smoke and brood and watch the merriment from afar, following his old childhood pattern. When it got very late, he would go into his bedroom, write in his diary, say his rosary, and try to go to sleep, praying that the din would soon die down.
But living at the Bungalow did have its compensations. One night when Stoddard and several of his new friends were threading through the potted palms at the hotel, he overheard someone mutter, apparently with some envy, "There goes the Bungalow Crowd now." There was, then, simply the sense of belonging. If Stoddard was never really "one of the boys," he was at least an honorary member of a set that was much in demand in Honolulu society. When the "boys" were invited somewhere for an evening or weekend, it appears that they were often urged to bring "Charley" along. Then, too, Stoddard enjoyed those ''forbidden" thrills known only to homosexuals who find themselves living among high-spirited and ultramasculine heterosexuals. Since females were supposedly "forbidden the premises," everyone was free to run around naked, a house rule that delighted Stoddard more in his observing than his observance. Another rule was that overnight guests could share anyone's bed without much fanfare, with the result that Stoddard sometimes awoke to discover a naked young man sleeping next to him. Finally, in spite of what he had told Will Stuart, it appeared that there was going to be someone in the Bungalow to "gush over." He felt a strong attraction for the dark-eyed bank clerk, Charles Deering, and before long Stoddard decided that Deering was to be his new "Kid."
Stoddard began his "labor of love" by redecorating Deering's room with all manner of
objets d'art,
and he began to shower the young man with every sort of kindness. "O, this yearning," Stoddard wrote in his diary, "I thank God for it!" (D 12 Mar. 1883). For his part, Deering seemed genuinely pleased and flattered by the thoughtfulness of this middle-aged man, and he tried to express a reasonable gratitude. The
 
Page 98
problem was that Stoddard chose to interpret Deering's thanks as a sign of requited love. Stoddard became covert and ecstatic at the same time. "We don't wish to disturb the Bungalow Boys with a show of affection," he explained in his diary, "which would naturally leave them out in the cold. We feel thrice what we dare to say and know all the sweet caresses of secret love." In the same mood on another occasion, Stoddard asked his diary, ''Will there be a consummation, I wonder? I long for it, and yet I fear it. Let us see!!" (D 19 28 Mar. 1883).
Into this sanctum of quivering possibilities barged Belle Strong, who gradually began to assume the roleat least from Stoddard's point of viewof a seductive serpent. Belle had paved the way for her family's arrival in the Islands by sending "dear old Charley" a series of ingratiating letters, such as the one in which she compared Stoddard favorably to the young Oscar Wilde, who had visited the Strongs' San Francisco studio. "He was delightfully entertaining, and said that the only thing he regretted about California was that he had not seen the Yosemite Valley and Charley Stoddard. But you, Charley, are the real aesthetehe affects what to you is natural and he has not your languour, grace, or beautiful voice and so the general verdict is that we have a better aesthete at home than this fellow who came all these miles to 'show off.'"
29
Stoddard was disarmed by letters like this; and when the Strongs and their baby arrived during the fall of 1882, he was delighted at first to see them.
It was during the next spring that everything began to change. Before Stoddard's horrified eyes, young Deering fell in love with Belle, and she in turn welcomed his attentions. Joe, who had begun to loathe his wife and who hardly cared one way or another, would sometimes come up to the Bungalow to sleep overnight with Stoddard. Stoddard became intensely jealous of Belle, who took it upon herself to tear down the decorations that Stoddard had so lovingly arranged in the Kid's room and then to put up those of her own devising, having the nerve to ask Stoddard to entertain her all the while at the piano. When Stoddard demurred, she "pretended to be much hurt." One night when he had drunk too much, he told off this "heartless" and "stupid" woman to her "bulbous" face (D 13 Jan., Apr.-Sept. 1883).
A complicating factor, which sometimes reversed the polarities in the Stoddard-Deering-Belle "triangle," was the arrival in town of a shipload of good-looking naval officers. According to one source, sailors of many nationalities "longed for assignment to the Pacific" because they
 
Page 99
knew of the cordial welcome awaiting them from certain "hospitable residents" of Honolulu.
30
Belle aspired to be one of these. The visit of the USS
Essex
in 1883 serves to illustrate the two ways Stoddard benefited from Belle's kindness to these men. First, he had the pleasure of meeting some of them at her receptions. One June 26, for instance, he captured a "prize beauty" who "guyed" him, gave "taffy'' in profusion, and was altogether "very agreeable" (D 18 Jul. 1883). Even more delightful was what happened after Belle fell in love with one of the
Essex
officers. Then it was Deering's turn to be jealous, and he looked to Stoddard for comfort during all-night tête-à-têtes that filled many an "exquisite hour, never to be forgotten." But when her sailor went back to sea, Belle gravitated once more to Deering, who then became oblivious of Stoddard, who in turn tried to be philosophical about his situation. Stoddard noted in his diary that "this will last till the next ship of war arrives and then the Strongs will be swamped and the Kid will be miserable and my duties as consoler and counselor will come in nicely. Patience my heart!"
One further complication in Stoddard's private affairs, though it did not diminish his idolatrous love for the Kid, was his secret relationship with a salesman named Leverette Doyle, whom he had met in February 1883 at the
Saturday Press
office. "Doylie" had begun making "unmistakable offers of fellowship," which Stoddard had found to be by "no means unwelcome" (D 26 Feb. 1883). During the following months, Stoddard occasionally slipped out of the Bungalow for a late assignation with Doyle, who, unlike Willie Lawler, proved to be "eminently satisfactory, yea, accomplished." On the night of Easter Sunday, for instance, they met in a little shanty and "made merry until moonrise" (D 25 Mar. 1883). Doyle was, in fact, an experienced and aggressive homosexual who did not hesitate to proposition good-looking men, a fact that soon became notorious in certain quarters of Honolulu. That June, in fact, Deering warned Stoddard that half the young fellows in town were wise to Doyle and that it was no longer safe to be seen in his company. In the case of "Lady Spook," Stoddard could afford to laugh at the local gossips, and he liked to boast that his indifference made him immune to the stings of the scandal mongers: "If an arrow flies this way, I receive it with the unction of a St. Sebastian."
31
But in the case of Doyle, the arrows were striking home, and Stoddard decided to end the relationship. "I am sorry for this," he wrote in his diary, "as he is alone in the world and seems a good sort of fellow" (D 22 Jun. 1883).
32
 
Page 100
III
During the upheavals of his first year at the Bungalow, writing offered Stoddard a welcome form of escape and emotional compensation. In addition to pieces for the
Saturday Press
and the
Overland Monthly
in San Francisco, he was also pursuing several projects for book publication. Of comparatively minor interest is the pamphlet he wrote for the Oceanic Steamship Company.
A Trip to Hawaii (1885)
consisted of brief essays on each of the islands that were calculated to lure tourists to the "Paradise of the Pacific." Somewhat more substantial were his "Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes," which began appearing in the
Overland Monthly
in 1885. Each letter described a different aspect of Honolulu life, subjects ranging from "By the Sea" to "A Poi-Feed" to ''Among the Wreath-makers." Along with a few additional pieces, these were eventually published in 1894, under the title
Hawaiian Life, Being Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes.
That summer of 1883, Stoddard also began his autobiographical San Francisco novel, which he had been pondering for at least ten years. The book was going to be misty and slightly wicked, and he felt that suitable titles might be
Summer Cloud or The Bohemian.
He began by interweaving his relationships with Eben Plympton and Julia ("Dudee") Fletcher, but the idea of telling the truth, however obliquely, was threatening. "A great fear comes over me," he wrote in his diary, "and I feel as if it were folly to attempt it" (D 26 Jul. 1883). The novel refused to go anywhere, and after writing a few chapters, Stoddard decided to drop it.
Of all that Stoddard wrote in 1883, nothing was more revealing than an offbeat story called "The Schism at St. Aidenn," which appeared in the
Overland Monthly
in April. In this tale, "compiled from the papers of Philemon, Superior of the Brothers of the Lily and the Rose," Stoddard joyously committed all of his favorite fantasies to paper. In projecting himself into the role of Philemon, he became a sort of abbot to a jolly band of young men.
The setting is a bucolic estate known as Saint Aidenn-down-dale (modeled on Santa Clara College), from which a "pastoral letter" is issued to the "wandering flock I [Philemon] so long to gather into this flowery fold." While most of this flock are artists of some sort (actors, painters, playwrights), several have been chosen to "ornament" the order simply by virtue of their beauty. The Brothers begin to arrive for

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