Homogenics At Home; Important Carpenter Photo identified
Ted Inigan, Chester (Gavin) Arthur, Edward Carpenter, George Merrill
Homogenics At Home, 1924:
Important Carpenter Photo Identified
When I first saw the photo it was part of a triptych created
for the Edward Carpenter Community's gathering entitled Edward Carpenter, the Man and His Spirit held in March of 2005. I
was immediately intrigued by the young man sitting on the floor in the photo.
The other men in the picture were easy to identify. Ted Inigan, Edward
Carpenter and George Merrill posing in what I would later learn was the sitting
room of their home in Guildford. But something
about the face and shape of the young man's head made me think that this could possibly
be the American Carpenter disciple and significant mid-twentieth century
counter-culture figure Gavin Arthur. I had seen later photos of Arthur but
nothing this early. However, if this was
Gavin Arthur, the photo was an important find not only for Carpenter studies, but
for the field of Gay History as well.
Chester Allen (Gavin) Arthur III
Chester Allen Arthur III was born on March 21, 1901 in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
a grandson of the 21st United States President Chester A. Arthur.
His parents divorced early in his young life and Chester was raised by his mother, the two of
them developing a close and devoted relationship.1 It was under her
tutelage that he discovered Eastern forms of spiritual practices and it was she
who sparked the spiritual questing that was to so shape the course of his
life. At one point in the early 1920s
both of them were members of the "Tantric Order of America"2, which
was led by a "colorful, unusual and controversial figure" named Pierre Bernard,
dubbed "Oom the Omnipotent" by the press3.
Chester entered Columba University
in 1920, but left both the University and the United States in 1922 to pursue his
true passion: the cause of Irish freedom. Having been deeply affected by the
events of the 1916 Easter Uprising when he was 15 years old, Chester left
collage and went to Ireland to join the rebellion against English rule, using
his monthly allowance from his estranged father to buy arms and provide bail
for the rebels.4 He was to
spend the next 4 years campaigning for Irish Independence, befriending many of
the revolutionaries and establishing deep, life long friendships with them.
It was during his time in Ireland
that Chester Arthur was to make his two "pilgrimages" to the man whose book, "Towards Democracy" was "more wonderful
than the bible"to him.5
Arthur had discovered Carpenter while at Columbia
through his reading of Richard Bucke's Cosmic
Consciousness. In that work Carpenter, along with such luminaries as
Socrates, Jesus, Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, is listed as one of the people
in history who were exemplars of a new level of consciousness, "as high above
the ordinary self consciousness of humans as that is above the simple
consciousness of animals6".
Having had nothing in common with his own father, Carpenter's book
"formed the first really heart to heart talks" he had ever had with anyone. Towards Democracy was his close companion
on board the ship as he crossed the Atlantic for Ireland in 19227.
Gavin was to write two accounts of his encounters with
Carpenter. In both of them he seems to conflate his two visits into one, so
sorting out what happened when can be a bit tricky. The longer and more
self-consciously literary of the two versions was published in his 1966 book The Circle of Sex. The second account
was written down in 1967 for the poet Allen Ginsburg and lacks the literary
embellishments of the first but has a directness of style that rings truer and is
more detailed about his sexual experiences with Carpenter. In essential details
both accounts are in agreement but the sequence of events varies. Considering that
by the mid 1960s the now named Gavin is writing his account forty years after
the fact could certainly account for the inconsistencies and perhaps even the
fact that he combines two separate visits into one. By drawing on his letters
and journals from the period we can get a better sense of what happened when.
Off To See the Avatar
In August of 1923 Gavin set off from Ireland for Sheffield,
armed with a letter of introduction to Carpenter from his friend Mrs. Charlotte
Despard, the suffragette and socialist who lived with "The Irish Joan of Arc"
and Yeats inspiration, Maude Gonne. Once
in Sheffield he headed to the Independent Labor Party office where he was
informed that Carpenter had recently moved south to the town of Guildford in Surry. The
fellow who informed him of this was planning on heading down to Guildford the next day to visit the ILP rest home there and
he offered to put Gavin up for the night, which he readily accepted. The two of them traveled down to Surry together,
arriving in Guildford on August 31.
On arriving at the ILP rest home one of the folks there
offered to escort Arthur up to Carpenter's home named "Millthorpe, Mountside", where he was
living with his long time partner George Merrill. When they got to Mountside Carpenter
greeted Gavin at the door of the house:
"Then he took me by the hand and led me
into the cozy living room. He introduced the other two men simply: "these are
my comrades, George and Ted". I found myself shaking hands with two pleasant
looking average men. Their hands were strong and firm and friendly and their
eyes were friendly also. I thought: these are the divine average that Walt and
Eddie write about, not really handsome yet certainly not ugly; and certainly
not in any way ashamed that they were living with a man who in his
autobiography openly avows himself to be a lover of his own sex."8
Or not. It is at this point in his narrative that I believe
the experiences of his second visit begin. According to the census records for Guildford, only Carpenter and Merrill are listed as
living at Mountside in 1923. Ted Inigan does not join them until 1924. He could
not have been introduced to Ted that September afternoon.
What we know for sure was that six days after his visit Arthur
was back in Dublin and wrote a thirteen page impassioned letter to Carpenter
about the ‘joy, the comfort, the awe with which meeting such a great and sweet
avatar filled me'. He goes on to pore
out his heart and reveal,
"There were so many things I wanted to
talk to you about- because anyone who could write my own unexpressable inner
thoughts and feelings would understand all I could say, and could help where no
one else in the world could help. Oh Edward Carpenter! Your book is my Bible,
the solace of my woe, and the inspiration of my moments of strength. To
yourself I could kneel in devotion and confess all my weaknesses and sins. I
have only seen you once, and yet I love you as a knight of old must have loved
some human saintly confessor; as some eager pupil in Athens must have loved old Socrates; with a
pure love and veneration more calming and deeply satisfying than any love I
have ever felt before."9
He also reveals his great dream,
"...a daring dream, aiming at the stars,
and even falling short of them, carrying me far along the road to Paradise: I
want to be to Ireland what Walt Whitman was to America, and what you are to
England!"
He asks Carpenter if he would
accept him as a disciple, to "teach him as Socrates taught the youth of Athens". It was his
fervent hope that he would "be worthy to catch fire" from Carpenter's torch
"and bring it to Ireland
to fire the imagination of the Gael".
Nine months later Chester
made his return visit to the man he considered the greatest living prophet.
Off To See the Avatar
II
On May 4, 1924 Chester
wrote to Carpenter presumably asking about coming for a visit. The next day George
Merrill wrote back that Edward was staying with his brother in "Croydon till
Friday" and he suggested that Gavin go see Carpenter there.10 Arthur did not take George's advice about going to Croydon. On Sunday, May 11 he
arrived in Guildford after dark and decided to wait untill the folowing morning to visit Carpenter. 11 The
next day, after wiring home for some money, he made his way up the hill to Mountside.
It would have been this visit when he was ushered into
the sitting room and introduced, perhaps for the second time, to George and then
for the first time to Ted Inigan. They spent the afternoon together talking
about Walt Whitman, Anne Gilchrist and Ireland. Edward gave him a copy of a
photo of Walt. As Arthur was readying to return to his inn, Carpenter insisted
that he stay for supper.
"After supper Ted suggested a walk in
the moonlight (it was June) sic and
we talked all the time about Carpenter and he said "Why don't you spend the
night? It would do Eddy so much good to sleep with a good looking American like
you."12
Chester said he would love nothing better. When they went back into the house Ted put "a flea in the
old man's ear" and Carpenter asked Chester
if he would do him a favor and sleep with him, "George and Ted need a rest".
The other two went up to bed and Carpenter and Chester stayed up talking in the light of the
fireplace. They talked about Carpenter's poetry, Walt Whitman and if Carpenter
had ever been to bed with a woman, which he had not, "he liked and admired
woman but... never felt any need to copulate with them". The topic returned once
again to Whitman and his sexuality at which point Chester blurted out, "I
suppose you slept with him?" Carpenter replied, "Oh yes- once in a while- he
regarded it as the best way to get to together with another man". After more
talk about Whitman, his sexuality and his alleged children, Chester forced himself to ask, "How did he
make love?" to which Eddy replied, "I will show you. Let's go to bed."
They went to Carpenter's bedroom and got undressed and into
bed together. Carpenter held Chester's
head in his hands and stared at him in the moonlight. Chester reverently thought, "This is the
laying on of hands. Walt. Then him. Then me." Carpenter snuggled up, kissed his
ear and stroked his body with an expert touch, "caressing the flesh with a
feather lightness". Arthur was impressed
by his bed mate's "seminal smell of leaves and ferns and the soil of autumn
woods" as he felt the fingers running over his body, building up the erotic
electrical charge.
"I just lay there in the moonlight that
poured in at the window and gave myself up to the loving old man's marvelous
petting. Every now and then he would bury his face in the hair of my chest,
agitate a nipple with the end of his tongue, or breathe in deeply from my
armpit. I had of course a throbbing erection but he ignored it for a long time.
Very gradually, however, he got nearer and nearer, first with his hand and
later with his tongue which was now flickering all over me like summer
lightning... At last his hand was moving between my legs and his tongue was in my
belly button. And then when he was tickling my fundament just behind the balls
and I could no longer hold it any longer, his mouth closed just over the head
of my penis and I could feel my young vitality flowing into his old age. He did
not suck me at all. It was really karezza...(but)
I had not learned the control necessary to karezza...
The emphasis was on the caressing and loving. I feel asleep like a child safe
in the father-mother arms, the arms of God. And dreamed of autumn woods with their
seminal smell."
The next morning they made love again and bathed, had a
vegetarian breakfast with George and Ted and spent the rest of the day
conversing together. Carpenter gave Chester
a photo of himself and a letter of introduction to Havelock Ellis and they made
their goodbye.13
Back in London that evening Chester wrote to his
mother,
"I had the most delightful time at Guildford. Now if Carpenter dies - I shall at least have
the most beautiful memories of him. He really is the most restful person I ever
met. One expands in his presence, and goes away with a song in the heart. He
has helped me more than I can tell you, and I would not have missed this trip
for anything - as I gained more by it than all my years at collage."14
In a letter to Carpenter dated May 14, Chester writes,
"Thanks from the bottom of my inmost
heart for your kindness to me while I was in Sheffield.
To the end of my days I shall have the most beautiful memories of you and your
comrades."
During their conversations Carpenter had apparently asked
about comrade love in Ireland
which Arthur felt he had not answered fully. He now wrote,
"I should have said that a handful of
young Irishmen could not have stood up against the British
empire if they had not been bound by the same spiritual love which
bound the Theban Band. While I have never seen this love to be actually
physical, it may be in many instances."15
In the Circle of Sex
account Gavin states that he visited Carpenter several times more but the
evidence indicates that there were just these two visits. The photo of Ted,
Gavin, Eddie and George, would appear to have been taken on the second visit
when Ted is known to have been living at Mountside.
Chester's Later Life
Chester Arthur, while not becoming the Walt Whitman of Ireland, did go
on to have a most significant life. In 1930 he and his wife Charlotte had major
roles in Kenneth MacPherson's groundbreaking British avant-garde silent film Borderline, which featured the film
debut of the great African American singer, actor and political activist Paul
Robeson. On returning to the US
in the early 1930s he changed his name to Gavin and helped to found an anarchist
utopian arts commune called Moy Mell in the sand dunes outside of the Southern
California coastal city of San Luis
Obispo. In the late 1940s he moved to San Francisco and by the early 1960's he was a
well known mystic and teacher of astrology and a close confidant of Alan Watts.
It was at this time that he met the Beat Generation hero Neil Cassady and his
wife Carolyn for whom he became a spiritual teacher and friend.16 His communal households influenced the youth
culture in San Francisco's 1960s and his astrological skills were employed to
pick an auspicious date for the seminal counter-cultural event the "Human-Be In",
held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in 1967.
Through his friendship with Neil Cassidy, (with whom he had
a sexual relationship), Gavin met Allen Ginsberg. In 1966 Gavin introduced
Ginsberg to Carpenter's poetry which struck Allen "as the combine of
Blake-visionary and Whitmanic-direct-notation nearest my own intuition that I'd
ever stumbled upon"17. In a 1973
interview with Gay Liberationist Allen Young published in Gay Sunshine
magazine, Ginsberg articulated a poetic line of transmission that was
transmitted by the older man to the younger by sexual relations. He was part of
that line through his sexual love relationship with Neil Cassedy, "who slept
with Gavin Arthur, who slept with Edward Carpenter, who slept with Walt
Whitman."18
Now Back to the Photo
While I had a hunch that the young man in the photo may be
Gavin, I had only seen pictures of him from the late 1960s and could not be
absolutely sure. That sent me off to see what photos there might be in the Arthur
Family Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
Because of the strange angle that the young man was shot from it seemed to make
his face longer that the photos I found there of young Gavin. I viewed the film Borderline and was almost convinced but not quite fully. Then,
while looking through the Charles Sixsmith Collection at the John Rylands
Library in Manchester,
I hit the jackpot: a second photo taken at the same time as the photo in the Sheffield
Archives collection. In this second photo George Merrill is not in the photo
and the young man is sitting on the left arm of Carpenter's chair, there by
allowing him to be shot at a much higher angle. Now I was absolutely sure it
was Chester Allen (Gavin) Arthur III as he looked the same as in the other
images I had found of him.
This amazing photo, which sent me on my explorations into
Gavin Arthur's life and his visits to Edward Carpenter, has a number of
historical and cultural significances: it is a pictorial document of an open,
non-monogamous Gay male "family" in 1924; it bears witness to Gavin's visit to
Carpenter and their relationship; it provides a significant illustration of the
beautiful Gay succession tale told by Allen Ginsberg connecting our present
queer selves and bodies to Walt Whitman's body, sex and spirit. It is indeed an important photo for both
Carpenter studies and LGBT history.
Joey Cain
1. Biographical Note, Arthur
Family Papers, Library of Congress.
2.Gavin Arthur, Digest of My Life, MSS, chronological
listing by year of events in G. Arthur's life. Arthur Family Papers, Library of
Congress.
ECF Originals 
