{"id":121338,"date":"2015-12-25T22:52:10","date_gmt":"2015-12-25T22:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/12\/25\/more-again-from-strangers\/"},"modified":"2015-12-25T22:52:10","modified_gmt":"2015-12-25T22:52:10","slug":"more-again-from-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/12\/25\/more-again-from-strangers\/","title":{"rendered":"More (again) from Strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

may-shepard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

weeesi<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

[This is part of my series on Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century<\/i> by Graham Robb. Previous posts can be found here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

1) Are you a man interested in having a sexual encounter with another man but not keen on visiting a male brothel? Look no further than your nearest Turkish bathhouse. They offered \u201csex and companionship and were usually much safer than brothels\u201d because your chances of being blackmailed were somewhat lower.\u00a0You were asked if you wanted a good-looking attendant and the rest was history. Robb writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cBathhouse customers could relax in a world where secret signs were no longer necessary. In the bathhouse, the normal situation was reversed: it would have taken more ingenuity to avoid<\/i> a homosexual encounter.\u201d<\/b> <\/p>\n

Holmes and Watson visit a Turkish bath together in The Adventure of the Illustrious Client<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\n

Both Holmes and I had a
\nweakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I
\n have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else. On the upper floor of the Northumberland Avenue establishment
\nthere is an isolated corner where two couches lie side by side, and it was on these that we lay upon September 3, 1902, the day
\nwhen my narrative begins. I had asked him whether anything was stirring\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Thanks, Granada Holmes \u2013 now I need the TAB equivalent. [x]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

2) If the Achilles statue (aka the Wellington Monument) in Hyde Park appears in TAB \u2013 even a glimpse \u2013 I will die. Oscar Wilde mentions \u201cthe things that go on in front of\u201d this statue in An Ideal Husband<\/i> and also mentions it in The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/i>. It was a well-known and favourite place for men to meet, perhaps for\u2026 obvious reasons.<\/b> [x]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/figure>\n

3) Using endearments such as \u201cdear fellow\u201d, \u201cdear boy\u201d, or signing correspondence with \u201cyour dear boy\u201d<\/b> has been noted in surviving letters between men who had relationships with other men. If I\u2019m not mistaken I think these were used quite regularly between Holmes and Watson. <\/p>\n

4) Robb notes that\u00a0\u201cin the present state of research, only about fifty works of western literature in the 19th century can be said to treat the subject of male homosexuality more or less openly<\/b>.\u201d This number includes works that were written during the 19th century but only published in the 20th, and also those that treated the subject\u00a0\u201cincidentally or imperceptibly\u201d aka through extremely buried subtext. <\/p>\n

So if one was interested in writing a story about two men in love in the 19th century\u2026one would probably have been very, very careful\u2026and used subtext, metaphors, codes, etc etc etc\u2026 maybe had the illustrator draw on a moustache\u2026created a wife\u2026and then killed her off-stage\u2026 who really knows\u2026 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I had asked him whether anything was stirring<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

screaming<\/p>\n

There is a pretty high quality\u00a0\u201cYes, my boy\u201d (Holmes to Watson) at the beginning of\u00a0\u201cThe Musgrave Ritual<\/a>,\u201d from very same paragraph that includes the line about \u201cRicoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually in the context your work, @weeesi<\/a>, the whole opening of that story is hella gay. Holmes calls Watson\u00a0\u201cmy boy\u201d more than once; he caresses his case files suggestively; this is the same story that talks about Holmes\u2019s Bohemianism and in which Watson talks about being\u00a0\u201cnot in the least conventional\u2026myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

may-shepard: weeesi: [This is part of my series on Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb. Previous posts can be found here.] 1) Are you a man interested in having a sexual encounter with another man but not keen on visiting a male brothel? Look no further than your nearest Turkish bathhouse. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “More (again) from Strangers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[3033,1810,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}