Elisa Rolle's Blog, page 240

February 6, 2017

Victor Stiebel (March 14, 1907 – February 6, 1976)

Victor Frank Stiebel was a South African-born British couturier. A founder member of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers, he was among the top ten designers in Britain in the war and post-war years.
Born: 1907, Durban, South Africa
Died: 1976, London, United Kingdom
Education: University of Cambridge
Lived: 4 Chichester Terrace, Brighton BN2 1FG, UK (50.81617, -0.11415)
Books: South African childhood
People also search for: Norman Hartnell, Richard Addinsell, Annie Beatrice Richards, William Arthur Addinsell

Victor Stiebel was a South African-born British couturier. Richard Addinsell was a British composer, best known for film music, primarily his Warsaw Concerto, composed for the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight. Date of when their relationship started is vague, but it is recorded that “on the evening of March 27, 1965, after months of pain, Winnie Ashton rallied from her sickbed sufficiently to tie a purple nylon scarf around her head and to dab on some lipstick. She called for her old friends, Dick Addinsell and designer Victor Stiebel, to come to her home at 1 Draycott Place in Chelsea for a kind of farewell party” Declining health forced Addinsell to retire in 1965. Following the death of Stiebel, in 1976, the frail composer became even more withdrawn. He died little more than one year later, in 1977. In 1999 it was revealed that the royalties for Warsaw Concerto had belonged to the parents of author Jilly Cooper, whose brother advanced the theory that Addinsell - for many years their neighbor - gave it to them as thanks for being discreet about his relationship with Stiebel.
Together from (before) 1965 to 1976: 11 years.
Richard Stewart Addinsell (January 13, 1904 - November 14, 1977)
Victor Stiebel (1907- 1976)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
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The first owner of 4 Chichester Terrace was George Ashburner. As with many who subsequently lived in the house he had strong connections with India although he’d been born in Llandaff, Wales in 1810.
Address: 4 Chichester Terrace, Brighton BN2 1FG, UK (50.81617, -0.11415)
Type: Private Property
Place
Previous owners of 4 Chichester Terrace were: George Ashburner: 1848 – 1863, Edward Wigram: 1863 – 1870, Catherine Wigram: 1870 – 1876 and Thomas Cundy III, 1878 – 1885. Richard Addinsell, the witty, urbane and prolific composer of light popular music who wrote an international hit with the Warsaw Concerto, lived in the penthouse of No. 4 Chichester Terrace until his death in 1977. He shared the flat with his partner Victor Stiebel, who was one of the leading coutouriers of the time and a founder member of the Incorporated Society of Fashion Designers.
Life
Who: Richard Addinsell (January 13, 1904 – November 14, 1977) and Victor Stiebel (1907-1976)
Richard Addinsell had flourished in the pre-war and post-war theatrical era when revue was one of its most popular forms of entertainment and from the mid-twenties, when he wrote the score for “The Charlot Revue of 1926”, Addinsell was one of he most sought after contributors to the genre. He cotributed songs for songs for Noel Coward’s “Sigh No More” and Arthur Macrae’s “Living For Pleasure” and the entire score for Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure” and for all her succeeding one-woman shows. He also wrote the incidental music for many other theatre shows including Emlyn Williams’ “Trespass” and Jean Anouilh’s “Ring Round the Moon”. Addinsell composed many film scores including “Goodbye Mr Chips”, “Beau Brummel”, “Blythe Spirit” and “The Prince and the Show Girl”. But it was his theme music for the film “Dangerous Moonlight” which provided the greatest hit of his career. This was ”The Warsaw Concerto” which was to become a worldwide hit in its own right. Vidtor Stiebel, Addinsell’s partner, was renowned for the restrained elegance of his designs and along with the other leading coutouriers of his time including Edward Molyneux, Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies did much to establish the British look in the world of international fashion. He also designed for a number of leading English theatre stars including Vivien Leigh and Margaret Leighton and frequently designed the clothes of leading ladies in various stage productions as well as having contracts with such commercial design firms such as Jacqmar. Addinsell and Stiebel enetrtained many glamorous friends in their Chichester Terrace penthouse including Noel Coward, Clemence Dane, Vivien Leigh, Margaret Leighton and Joyce Grenfell.

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Published on February 06, 2017 01:15

Ramón Novarro (February 6, 1899 – October 30, 1968)

Jose Ramón Gil Samaniego, best known as Ramón Novarro, was a Mexican-American film, stage and television actor who began his career in silent films in 1917 and eventually became a leading man and one ...
Born: February 6, 1899, Durango, Mexico
Died: October 30, 1968, North Hollywood, California, United States
Lived: 2255 Verde Oak Drive
Buried: Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, USA, Plot: Section C, Lot 586, Grave 5, GPS (lat/lon): 34.02615, -118.17595
Height: 1.68 m
Siblings: Rosa Samaniegos, Guadalupe Samaniegos, more

Silent film star Ramon Novarro (1899-1968) bought this home at 2255 Verde Oak Drive in 1945. Built in 1928 it was deisgned by Lloyd Wright. The Mayanesque house was built for Louis Samuel, Ramon Novarro's personal secretary. After Novarro found Samuel embezzling money, he took over the house and expanded it, hiring legendary art director Cedric Gibbons to design interiors. Unlike other homosexual actors, Novarro refused to marry a woman to hide his homosexuality. He was murdered in this home at age 69 by two brothers who were male prostitutes and physique photo models. The sensational coverage of his murder made Novarro's homosexuality a matter of public record. Since the Novarro days, the house has been home to a number of musical theater types: composer Leonard Bernstein, theater director Jerome Robbins, and musical-comedy duo Betty Comden and Adolph Green. This is the house that gave actress Diane Keaton the historic preservation bug (she hired architect Josh Schweitzer to restore it). And actress Christina Ricci owned it for a year, selling its to its current owner in 2006 for $2.827 million. It hit the market again in Nov. 2011 asking $4.195 million; was back in the market in 2013 with a new price of $4.495 million.

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Published on February 06, 2017 01:09

Mabel Reed (February 6, 1876 – December, 1962)

Buried: Providence Friends Meeting Cemetery, Media, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, USA
Buried alongside: Mary Ellicott Arnold

Mary Ellicott Arnold was an American social activist, teacher and writer best known for In the Land of the Grasshopper Song, the memoir she wrote with Mabel Reed on their experiences as Bureau of Indian Affairs employees, 1908–1909. A native of Staten Island, New York, Arnold moved at an early age to Somerville, New Jersey where she began her childhood friendship with Mabel Reed, a companionship that later matured into a life partnership. Arnold studied business at Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, and agriculture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. As young women, Arnold and Reed devoted five years (1901–1906) to farming a fifty-five acre plot. They next gained experience as urban organizers in New York City. Their employer, City and Suburban Homes Company, was a philanthropic organization building affordable, decent housing for the working poor. After that Arnold and Reed accepted positions as so-called field matrons on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in the Klamath River Valley of Northern California. Arnold and Reed lacked the social and racial prejudices of the era. Although the Bureau of Indian Affairs expected them to enforce white cultural values, they instead accepted Karok nation practices and established a close working friendship with Essie, a native woman with three husbands. They were eager, Arnold said, not to be “ladies—the kind who have Sunday schools, and never say a bad word, and rustle around in a lot of silk petticoats”.
Together from (around) 1894 to 1963: 69 years.
Mabel Reed (1876–1963)
Mary Ellicott Arnold (April 23, 1876 – May 23, 1968)

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Published on February 06, 2017 00:58

James Merrill (March 3, 1926 - February 6, 1995)

James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies.
Born: March 3, 1926, New York City, New York, United States
Died: February 6, 1995, Tucson, Arizona, United States
Education: Amherst College
Lawrenceville School
Lived: James Merrill House, 107 Water St, Stonington, CT 06378, USA (41.33371, -71.90663)
702 Elizabeth St, Key West, FL 33040, USA (24.55511, -81.79894)
Melinas Merkouri 44, Athina 115 21, Greece (37.98245, 23.7514)
164 E 72nd St, New York, NY 10021, USA (40.76992, -73.96171)
James L. Breese House, 155 Hill St, Southampton, NY 11968, USA (40.88664, -72.39895)
18 W 11th St, New York, NY 10011, USA
Buried: Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, USA
Buried alongside: David Jackson
Movies: Lorenzo's Oil
Parents: Hellen Ingram Merrill, Charles E. Merrill
Siblings: Charles E. Merrill, Jr., Doris Merrill

James Ingram Merrill was a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet. His father was Charles E. Merrill, founding partner of the Merrill Lynch investment firm. James Merrill's partner of more than three decades was writer and artist David Jackson. Merrill and Jackson met in New York City after a performance of Merrill's The Bait in May 1953. Together, they moved to Stonington, Connecticut in 1955. For two decades, the couple spent part of each year in Athens, Greece. "It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew," said Alison Lurie, who wrote a memoir about it more than forty years later, Familiar Spirits (2001). In his 1993 memoir A Different Person, Merrill painted a candid portrait of gay life in the early 1950s, describing friendships and relationships with several men including Dutch poet Hans Lodeizen, Italian journalist Umberto Morra, U.S. writer Claude Fredericks, art dealer Robert Isaacson, and his last partner from 1983 onward, actor Peter Hooten. Jackson and Merrill are both buried at Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington, Connecticut.
Together from 1953 to 1983: 30 years.
David Noyes Jackson (September 16, 1922 – July 13, 2001)
James Merrill (March 3, 1926 - February 6, 1995)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
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ISBN-10: 1500563323
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As a boy, James Merrill enjoyed a highly privileged upbringing in educational and economic terms.
Address: 155 Hill St, Southampton, NY 11968, USA (40.88664, -72.39895)
Type: Private Property
National Register of Historic Places: 80002778, 1980
Place
Built between 1897 and 1906, Design by McKim, Mead & White (Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928) and Stanford White (1853–1906)), Landscape Design by Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)
James L. Breese House, also known as The Orchard, is a historic home located at Southampton in Suffolk County, New York. The property was developed in 1980 with 29 luxury condominiums flanking the central gardens, while the home’s vast ballroom and first-floor public reception areas were preserved. It was designed as a summer residence in the Colonial Revival style. An 1858 house original to the site was incorporated into the structure. It is two and one half stories high and clad with white painted wood shingles. It features a two story portico, reminiscent of Mount Vernon. Breese was a close friend of architect Stanford White, commissioning modifications and additions until the latter’s death. The home’s spectacular 70-foot "music room" is believed to be White’s last completed project. From 1926 to 1956, it was owned by Charles E. Merrill (1885–1956), who deeded it to Amherst College. Amherst College later sold it to the Nyack School for Boys, which closed in 1977. It is located within the Southampton Village Historic District.
Life
Who: James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995)
All three of Charles E. Merrill’s children were wealthy from unbreakable trusts made early in childhood. Merrill was the father of educator and philanthropist Charles E. Merrill Jr. (born 1920), author and founder of the Thomas Jefferson School, Commonwealth School, and former chairman of the board of trustees of Morehouse College; San Francisco philanthropist Doris Merrill Magowan (1914–2001); and poet James Merrill (1926–1995), who created the Ingram Merrill Foundation to support writers and the arts. In the early 1950s, Merrill’s three children renounced any further inheritance from their father’s estate in exchange for $100 "as full quittance"; as a result, 95% of Charles Merrill’s $25 million estate (he had already donated The Orchard to Amherst, which had in turn sold it) would benefit hospitals, churches, and educational causes. James Merrill was drafted in 1944 into the United States Army and served for eight months. His studies interrupted by war and military service, Merrill returned to Amherst College in 1945 and graduated summa cum laude in 1947. Merrill’s, or "Jim" as he was known at Amherst, senior thesis on French Impressionist Marcel Proust heralded his literary talent, and his English professor upon reading it declared to the Amherst graduating class that Jim was "destined for some sort of greatness." “The Black Swan,” a collection of poems Merrill’s Amherst professor (and lover) Kimon Friar published privately in Athens, Greece in 1946, was printed in just one hundred copies when Merrill was 20 years old. Merrill’s first mature work, “The Black Swan” is among Merrill’s scarcest titles. Merrill’s first commercially published volume was “First Poems,” issued in 990 numbered copies by Alfred A. Knopf in 1951.

Queer Places, Vol. 3 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906695
ISBN-10: 1532906692
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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In winter 1979, Tennessee Williams, a resident and a symbol of gay Key West, had been attacked outside the Monster while harmonizing on an hold hymn with a friend: it was a reminder that some people still “cared” very much what homosexuals did. Yet the fact remained: it would be possible for James Merrill to be gay and “quite inconspicuous” here. It was no longer necessary to lead a double life in Greece. David Jackson wasted no time buying one of those “gingerbread houses.” The address was 702 Elizabeth Street, a location even less promising than Water Street in Stonington or Athinaion Efivon in Athens had been.
Address: 702 Elizabeth St, Key West, FL 33040, USA (24.55511, -81.79894)
Type: Private Property
Place
At the time sleepy Elizabeth Street was one lane in the middle of the island; closer to the water, the street got wider and the houses bigger and smarter. Here it was lined by little homes, some as run-down and small as shacks; these belonged to Cuban and black Bahamian families who had once worked at the naval yard or the cigar factory. The Elizabeth Street House of Merrill itself was a handsome but small, modest home, built in the Bahamas in the 1860s and shipped to the island by barge (there was no wood for building in the Keyes.) But the previous owner was a drug dealer, and the property wasn’t in good shape. The house had a white picket fence and a swinging gate on the street.
Life
Who: James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) and David Noyes Jackson (September 16, 1922 – July 13, 2001)
David Jackson was the life partner of poet James Merrill. A writer and artist, Jackson is remembered today primarily for his literary collaboration with Merrill. The two men met in May 1953 in New York City, after a performance of Merrill’s play, "The Bait." They shared homes in Stonington, CT, Athens, and Key West. "It was, I often thought, the happiest marriage I knew," wrote Alison Lurie, who got to know both men in the 1950s and thought enough of the relationship to write a memoir about it more than forty years later, “Familiar Spirits” (2001.) James Merrill’s attitude toward the Key West house was distanced. Not that he was sceptical, but he stepped back and gave David Jackson full rein to do his thing, as if he knew DJ needed it. The house was purchased in David’s name, and both of them referred to it as David’s. More than generosity on his part, however, Jimmy’s readiness to think of it as David’s suggested his own reluctance to claim it. Over the years, Jackson would spend more and more time there and Merrill less.

by Elisa Rolle

Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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“If I am host at last, it is of little more than my own past. May others be at home in it,” James Merrill, “Water Street.” David Jackson and James Merrill are both buried at Stonington Cemetery, Connecticut.
Address: 107 Water St, Stonington, CT 06378, USA (41.33371, -71.90663)
Type: Museum (open to public)
Phone: +1 860-535-4112
National Register of Historic Places: 13000618, 2013
Place
The James Merrill House is a XIX century house at 107 Water Street in Stonington Borough in southeastern Connecticut, formerly owned by poet James Merrill. Upon his death in 1995, the house was kept by the village as a home for writers and scholars. 107 Water Street had once been a XIX century residential and commercial structure that had first served as a drug store and a residence for the owner’s family. Village life and the apartment itself inspired some of James Merrill’s most important work, including “The Changing Light at Sandover,” his book-length epic poem based on Merrill’s and Jackson’s communications with the spirit world by means of a Ouija board in the turret dining room on the third floor. After James Merrill’s death in 1995, the Stonington Village Improvement Association (SVIA) transformed the Jackson and Merrill apartments into a place for writers to live and work. A group of Stonington residents and friends of Merrill began a program that would make the apartment available, rent-free, to writers and scholars for academic-year residencies. The Merrill apartment looks much the way Merrill left it - the personally eclectic décor remains as it was two decades ago. In the years since Merrill’s death, over thirty writers have used this space as a residence and retreat. The house is usually occupied by just one writer at a time, for stays of one or two semesters.

by Elisa Rolle

Life
Who: James Ingram Merrill (March 3, 1926 – February 6, 1995) and David Noyes Jackson (September 16, 1922 – July 13, 2001)
James Merrill was a poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1977) for “Divine Comedies” (1976.) Merrill’s partner of three decades was David Jackson, a writer and artist. Merrill and Jackson met in New York City after a performance of Merrill’s play “The Bait” at the Comedy Club in 1953. (Poet Dylan Thomas and playwright Arthur Miller walked out of the performance.) Together, Jackson and Merrill moved to Stonington, Connecticut in 1955, purchasing a property at 107 Water Street. For most of two decades, the couple spent winters in Athens at their home at 44 Athinaion Efivon. Greek themes, locales, and characters occupy a prominent position in Merrill’s writing. In 1979, Merrill and Jackson largely abandoned Greece and began spending part of each year at Jackson’s home in Key West, Florida. James Merrill and David Jackson are buried at Evergreen Cemetery (Stonington, CT 06378), at the corner of North Main Street & Route 1 in Stonington. The Stonington Cemetery is a twenty-two acre non-sectarian burial ground founded in 1849. Behind Merrill and Jackson there is the burial place of Doris Sewell Jackson and Lynn M. Roth. "Sewelly," as she was known to her friends, married David Jackson soon after the war. The newlywed couple moved to Europe for a year and a half, living in France, Switzerland and Germany. He worked in the post-war reconstruction and she as a designer. They hitchhiked to Norway and Italy, skied in the Alps and persuaded her Swiss landlord to host an American Barn Dance. In Paris, she apparently engaged Ernest Hemingway in a fractious discussion that led to his suggestion that "If you were a man, I'd knock your head off." After she and David separated, she returned to California to attend the Art Center, in Los Angeles. There she met George Wright, who became a lifelong friend. They worked together in New York City as graphic artists designing advertising, wallpaper, and textiles. When she moved to the Stonington area, thanks to her continuing friendship with David Jackson, she became a close member of the literary scene at James Merrill's house. In time, she moved to Noank with her friend Lynn Roth, and later to Mystic.

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Published on February 06, 2017 00:38

Girolamo Benivieni (February 6, 1453 - August 1542)

Girolamo Benivieni was a Florentine poet and a musician. His father was a notary in Florence. He suffered from poor health most of his life, which prevented him from taking a more stable job.
Born: February 6, 1453, Florence
Died: August 1542, Florence
Buried: San Marco, Florence
Buried alongside: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Church: San Marco is the name of a religious complex in Florence, Italy. It comprises a church and a convent. The convent, which is now a museum, has three claims to fame. During the XV century it was home to two famous Dominicans, the painter Fra Angelico and the preacher Girolamo Savonarola. Also housed at the convent is a famous collection of manuscripts in a library built by Michelozzo.
Address: Via Camillo Cavour, 50, 50121 Firenze, Italy (43.77764, 11.2581)
Place
The present convent occupies the site where a Vallombrosan monastery existed in the XII century, which later passed to the Sylvestrine monks. Both of these groups were branches of the Order of St. Benedict. In the time of the Sylvestrines at least, the church was used both for monastic liturgical functions and as a parish church. From this initial period there have recently been rediscovered some traces of frescoes below floor level. In 1418 the Sylvestrines, accused of laxity in their observance of the Rule, were pressured to leave, but it took a direct intervention of Pope Eugene IV and the Council of Basel before finally in 1437 the buildings were vacated at San Marco and passed to observant Dominicans coming from the Convent of San Domenico, Fiesole. A decisive element was the intervention of Cosimo de' Medici the Elder, who since 1420 had already shown his support for the reformed Franciscan convent of Bosco ai Frati and from his return from exile in 1434 had made clear his desire to see an observant community of Domenicans established in Florence. When the Sylvestrines left, housed from that time onwards in the smaller monastery of San Giorgio alla Costa left, Dominican friars took over the San Marco buildings, which were in a poor condition and for two years or so were obliged to live in damp cells or wooden huts. They appealed to Cosimo de' Medici the Elder, who lived nearby in the family palace, now known as the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, to fund the renovation of the entire complex. So it was that in 1437 Cosimo commissioned Michelozzo, the Medici’s favourite architect to rebuild the San Marco convent on Renaissance lines. By 1438 the work was well underway and the final dedication took place on Epiphany night 1443 in the presence of Pope Eugene IV and the Archbishop of Capua, cardinal Niccolò d'Acciapaccio. San Marco became one of the main elements in the new configuration of the area to the North of the centre of Florence (the so-called “Medici quartiere”, along with the Medici family palazzo and the basilica of San Lorenzo. These years marked in fact the height of the Medici family’s artistic patronage, above all in connection with the transfer to Florence of the Ecumenical Council from Ferrara to Florence in 1439. Cosimo invested in the new convent a notable amount of finance, amounting to some 40,000 florins according to Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Michelozzo working on San Marco from 1439 to 1444. An outstanding feature of the convent is the library on the first floor, spacious with two rows of columns which form three naves covered in barrel vaulting. The large number of windows fill the room with natural light for study and for the copying of manuscripts. Under Lorenzo il Magnifico the library became one of the favourite meeting points for Florentine humanists such as Agnolo Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola who could conveniently consult the precious book collections assembled by the Medici, with their rare Greek and Latin texts. Both are among the significant figures buried in San Marco.
Life
Who: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (February 24, 1463 – November 17, 1494) and Girolamo Benivieni (February 6, 1453 – August 1542)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the "Hermetic Reformation". Giovanni was born at Mirandola, near Modena, the youngest son of Gianfrancesco I Pico, Lord of Mirandola and Count of Concordia (1415–1467), by his wife Giulia, daughter of Feltrino Boiardo, Count di Scandiano. The family had long dwelt in the Castle of Mirandola (Duchy of Modena), which had become independent in the XIV century and had received in 1414 from the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund the fief of Concordia. Mirandola was a small autonomous county (later, a duchy) in Emilia, near Ferrara. The Pico della Mirandola were closely related to the Sforza, Gonzaga and Este dynasties, and Giovanni's siblings wed the descendants of the hereditary rulers of Corsica, Ferrara, Bologna, and Forlì. A precocious child with an exceptional memory, Giovanni was schooled in Latin and possibly Greek at a very early age. Intended for the Church by his mother, he was named a papal protonotary (probably honorary) at the age of ten and in 1477 he went to Bologna to study canon law. At the sudden death of his mother three years later, Pico renounced canon law and began to study philosophy at the University of Ferrara. During a brief trip to Florence, he met Angelo Poliziano, the courtly poet Girolamo Benivieni, and probably the young Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola. For the rest of his life he remained very close friends with all three, including the ascetic and anti-humanist Savonarola. From 1480 to 1482, he continued his studies at the University of Padua, a major center of Aristotelianism in Italy. In 1494, Pico and his friend Angelo Poliziano died, under mysterious circumstances. Past historians hinted at death by poisoning, but more recent scholars suspect that Poliziano and Pico numbered among the first victims of the large-scale epidemic of syphilis – marked by acute symptoms and very rapid physical deterioration – which broke out in Europe in 1493 and 1494. He was interred at San Marco and Savonarola delivered the funeral oration. Ficino wrote: “Our dear Pico left us on the same day that Charles VIII was entering Florence, and the tears of men of letters compensated for the joy of the people. Without the light brought by the king of France, Florence might perhaps have never seen a more somber day than that which extinguished Mirandola's light.” In 2007, the bodies of Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola were exhumed. Scientists under the supervision of Giorgio Gruppioni, a professor of anthropology from Bologna, used current testing techniques to study the men's lives and establish the causes of their deaths. These forensic tests showed that both Poliziano and Pico likely died of arsenic poisoning, and arsenic was used to cure syphilis. Girolamo Benivieni was a Florentine poet and a musician. His father was a notary in Florence. He suffered from poor health most of his life, which prevented him from taking a more stable job. He was a leading member of the Medicean Academy, a society devoted to literary study. He was a friend of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whom he met for the first time in 1479; it was Mirandola who encouraged him to study Neoplatonism. In the late 1480s, he and Mirandola became students of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498). In 1496, he translated the teachings of Savonarola from Italian to Latin. After he began following Savonarola, he rejected his earlier poetry and attempted to write more spiritually. He participated in Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities, and documented the destruction of art worth "several thousand ducats". Pico experienced an heavenly love with Benivieni, ten years his junior, who ardently reciprocated his affections. Theirs was, they declared, a fervent but chaste love kept under watch by rigorous morality and Christian mysticism. However, during a sermon after Pico's death, Savonarola made a revelation which caused a sensation: Pico's soul had not immediately gone to paradise, but was consigned for a time to the flames of purgatory because of certain sins, which he did not wish to name. Popular opinion assumed that Pico had kept a female lover or a secret concubine. Five centuries later, it is impossible to know the truth, but the probability that Pico had a male lover, perhaps Benivieni himself, is now less unbelievable, as documents emerge showing the significance of homosexuality in the circle of Pico's friends (such as Ficino and Poliziano). It will never be known whether or not Pico remained celibate, or if his love for Benivieni was consummated. What is known is a delicate testimonial to this love: the tomb in which they decided to be buried together, and which can still be seen in the church of San Marco in Florence.

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Published on February 06, 2017 00:13

Christopher Marlowe (February 6, 1564 – May 30, 1593)

Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day.
Born: Canterbury, United Kingdom
Died: May 30, 1593, Deptford, London, United Kingdom
Education: The King's School, Canterbury
University of Cambridge
Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, SW1P 3PA (memorial)
St Nicholas, Deptford Green, Deptford, Greater London, SE8 5PQ
Books: Hero and Leander, Plays of Christopher Marlowe, more

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian of his day. He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. Marlowe was buried in an unmarked grave at St Nicholas (Deptford Green, Deptford, Greater London, SE8 5PQ).

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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Published on February 06, 2017 00:08

February 5, 2017

Anne, Queen of Great Britain (February 6, 1665 – August 1, 1714)

Anne became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, two of her realms, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain.
Born: February 6, 1665, St James's Palace, St James's, United Kingdom
Died: August 1, 1714, Kensington Palace, London, United Kingdom
Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, SW1P 3PA
Spouse: Prince George of Denmark (m. 1683–1708)
Successor: George I of Great Britain
Children: Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, Mary, George, Anne Sophia
Siblings: Mary II of England, James Stuart, Duke of Cambridge, more

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, became close to the young Princess Anne in about 1675, and the friendship grew stronger as the two grew older. Correspondence between the Duchess and the Queen reveals that the two women enjoyed a royally passionate romance. They called each other pet names: Sarah was “Mrs. Freeman” and Anne was “Mrs. Morley.” When Anne came to the throne in 1702, she named Sarah “Lady of the Bedchamber.” Anne and Sarah were virtually inseparable; no king’s mistress had ever wielded the power granted to the Duchess. Over time, Sarah became overconfident in her position and developed an arrogant attitude toward Anne, even going to far as to insult the queen in public. A cousin of Sarah’s, Abigail Hill, caught the Queen’s eye during Sarah’s frequent absences from Court, and eventually replaced her in Anne’s affections. After her final break with Anne in 1711, Sarah and her husband were dismissed from the court. Sarah enjoyed a "long and devoted" relationship with her husband of more than 40 years, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. The money she inherited from the Marlborough trust left her one of the richest women in Europe.
They met in 1675 and remained friends until 1711: 36 years.
Anne, Queen of Great Britain (February 6, 1665 – August 1, 1714)
Sarah Churchill (née Jenyns or Jennings), Duchess of Marlborough (June 5, 1660 – October 18, 1744)

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Published on February 05, 2017 23:54

William S. Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997)

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.
Born: February 5, 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Died: August 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kansas, United States
Education: Mexico City College
Harvard University
John Burroughs School
Los Alamos Ranch School
Lived: Hotel Chelsea
222 Bowery, New York, NY 10012, USA (40.72214, -73.99374)
Beat Hotel, Relais Hôtel du Vieux Paris, 9, rue Git-le-Coeur, 6th arr., 75006 Paris, France (48.85391, 2.34285)
8 Duke Street, W1U
Buried: Bellefontaine Cemetery, Saint Louis, St. Louis City, Missouri, USA, GPS (lat/lon): 38.69043, -90.23154
Movies: William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Naked Lunch, more
Albums: Dead City Radio, Call Me Burroughs, more

William S. Burroughs was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. Ian Sommerville was an electronics technician and computer programmer. He is known through his association with Burroughs's circle of Beat Generation figures and lived at Paris's so-called "Beat Hotel", when they were regulars there, becoming Burroughs's lover and "systems adviser". Around 1960, he programmed a random-sequence generator that Brion Gysin used in his cut-up technique. He and Gysin also collaborated in 1961 in developing the Dreamachine, a phonograph-driven stroboscope described as "the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed", and intended to affect the viewer's brain alpha wave activity. Sommerville along with Gysin and Burroughs collaborated on Let the Mice In, published in 1973. Sommerville died in a single car accident due to inexperience near Bath, England in 1976 shortly after obtaining his driving license. Burroughs' book My Education: A Book of Dreams, indeed largely composed of accounts of his dreams, includes dreams of talking with Sommerville.
Together from 1960 to 1976: 16 years.
Ian Sommerville (1940-1976)
William S. Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997)

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William S. Burroughs childhood home, at 4664 Pershing Place, St. Louis, MO 63108, described in “Junky” as a “solid, three-story, brick house in a large Midwest city,” sold in 2013 for $475,000. The real estate listing: “Welcome to 4664 Pershing Place. This home offers a rich history on one of the Central West End’s beautiful private streets. Once the childhood home of author William S. Burroughs (unconventional writer inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1990), this gorgeous home boasts architectural details no longer affordable in home building today. The living room has mahogany paneling, leaded glass windows, and built-in book cases. There are five bedrooms including a master with a large walk-in closet. The large patio in the back yard establishes an easy going feeling for entertaining, much like a visit to the French Quarter in New Orleans.”

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The Hotel Chelsea – also called the Chelsea Hotel, or simply the Chelsea – is a historic New York City hotel and landmark, known primarily for the notability of its residents over the years.
Address: 222 W 23rd St, New York, NY 10011, USA (40.74431, -73.9969)
Type: Guest facility (open to public)
Phone:+1 616-918-8770
National Register of Historic Places: 77000958, 1977
Place
Built between 1883 and 1885, Design by Hubert, Pirsson & Company (Philip Gengembre Hubert (1830-1911) and James W. Pirrson (1833-1888))
Opened for initial occupation in 1884, the twelve-story red-brick building that is now the Hotel Chelsea was one of the city’s first private apartment cooperatives. It was designed in a style that has been described variously as Queen Anne Revival and Victorian Gothic. Among its distinctive features are the delicate, flower-ornamented iron balconies on its facade, which were constructed by J.B. and J.M. Cornell and its grand staircase, which extends upward twelve floors. Generally, this staircase is only accessible to registered guests, although the hotel does offer monthly tours to others. At the time of its construction, the building was the tallest in New York. Hubert and Pirsson had created a "Hubert Home Club" in 1880 for "The Rembrandt,” a six-story building on West 57th Street intended as housing for artists. This early cooperative building had rental units to help defray costs, and also provided servants as part of the building staff. The success of this model led to other "Hubert Home Clubs,” and the Chelsea was one of them. Initially successful, its surrounding neighborhood constituted the center of New York’s theater district. However within a few years the combination of economic stresses, the suspicions of New York’s middle class about apartment living, the opening up of Upper Manhattan and the plentiful supply of houses there, and the relocation of the city’s theater district, bankrupted the Chelsea. In 1905, the building reopened as a hotel, which was later managed by Knott Hotels and resident manager A.R. Walty. After the hotel went bankrupt, it was purchased in 1939 by Joseph Gross, Julius Krauss, and David Bard, and these partners managed the hotel together until the early 1970s. With the passing of Joseph Gross and Julius Krauss, the management fell to Stanley Bard, David Bard’s son. On 18 June, 2007, the hotel’s board of directors ousted Bard as the hotel’s manager. Dr. Marlene Krauss, the daughter of Julius Krauss, and David Elder, the grandson of Joseph Gross and the son of playwright and screenwriter Lonne Elder III, replaced Stanley Bard with the management company BD Hotels NY; that firm has since been terminated as well. In May, 2011, the hotel was sold to real estate developer Joseph Chetrit for US$80 million. As of August 1, 2011, the hotel stopped taking reservations for guests in order to begin renovations, but long-time residents remain in the building, some of them protected by state rent regulations. The renovations prompted complaints by the remaining tenants of health hazards caused by the construction. These were investigated by the city’s Building Department, which found no major violations. In Nov. 2011, the management ordered all of the hotel’s many artworks taken off the walls, supposedly for their protection and cataloging, a move which some tenants interpreted as a step towards forcing them out as well. In 2013, Ed Scheetz became the Chelsea Hotel’s new owner after buying back five properties from Joseph Chetrit, his partner in King & Grove Hotels, and David Bistricer. Hotel Chelsea is now managed by Chelsea Hotels, formerly King & Grove Hotels. Restoration and renovation is underway and Hotel Chelsea plans to reopen in 2016.
Notable queer resident at Hotel Chelsea:
• William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author who wrote in the paranoid fiction genre, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the XX century.”
• Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” while staying at the Chelsea.
• Quentin Crisp (1908-1999), writer and raconteur. His first stay in the Hotel Chelsea coincided with a fire, a robbery, and the death of Nancy Spungen.
• Musician, gay civil rights icon and Stonewall veteran Stormé DeLarverie (1920-2014) resided at the hotel for several decades.
• Poets Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Gregory Corso (1930-2001) chose it as a place for philosophical and artistic exchange.
• Brad Gooch (born 1952), writer. His 2015 memoir “Smash Cut” recounts life in 1970s and 1980s New York City, including the time Gooch spent as a fashion model, life with his then-boyfriend filmmaker Howard Brookner, living in the famous Chelsea Hotel and the first decade of the AIDS crisis.
• Herbert Huncke (1915-1996), writer and poet. In his last few years, he lived in room 828, where his rent came from financial support from Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, whom Huncke never met. Herbert Huncke died in 1996 at age 81.
• Iggy Pop (born 1947), singer-songwriter, musician and actor. Pop’s career received a boost from his relationship with David Bowie when Bowie decided in 1972 to produce an album with Pop in England.
• Charles R. Jackson (1903-1968), author of “The Lost Weekend,” committed suicide in his room on September 21, 1968.
• Jasper Johns (born 1930), painter and printmaker. In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long-term lovers. For a time they lived in the same building as Rachel Rosenthal. In the same period he was strongly influenced by the gay couple Merce Cunningham (a choreographer) and John Cage (a composer.)
• Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), who wrote “On the Road” there.
• Lance Loud (1951-2001), television personality, magazine columnist and new wave rock-n-roll performer. Loud is best known for his 1973 appearance in “An American Family,” a pioneer reality television series that featured his coming out, leading to his status as an icon in the gay community.
• Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), photographer, known for his sensitive yet blunt treatment of controversial subject-mater in the large-scale, highly stylized black and white medium of photography. The homoeroticism of this work fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork.
• Larry Rivers (1923-2002), artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Poet Jeni Olin was his companion. Rivers also sustained a relationship with poet Frank O’Hara in the late 1950s and delivered the eulogy at O’Hara’s funeral in 1966.
• Patti Smith (born 1946), singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist. On November 17, 2010, she won the National Book Award for her memoir “Just Kids.” The book fulfilled a promise she had made to her former long-time roommate and partner, Robert Mapplethorpe.
• Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), composer and critic. In 1925 in Paris, he cemented his relationship with painter Maurice Grosser (1903-1986), who was to become his life partner and frequent collaborator. He and Grosser lived at Hotel Chelsea, where he presided over a largely gay salon that attracted many of the leading figures in music and art and theather, including Leonard Bernstein, Tennessee Williams, and many others. Virgil Thomson died on September 30, 1989, in his suite at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan, aged 92.
• Gore Vidal (1925-2012), writer and a public intellectual known for his patrician manner, epigrammatic wit, and polished style of writing.
• Rufus Wainwright (born 1973), lived in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City for six months, during which he wrote most of his second album.
• Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), playwright and author of many stage classics. Along with Eugene O’Neill and Arthur Miller he is considered among the three foremost playwrights in XX century American drama.
• Hotel Chelsea is often associated with the Warhol superstars, as Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey directed “Chelsea Girls” (1966), a film about his Factory regulars and their lives at the hotel. Chelsea residents from the Warhol scene included Edie Sedgwick, Viva, Ultra Violet, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, Andrea Feldman, Nico, Paul America, René Ricard, and Brigid Berlin.

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The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in the Latin Quarter of Paris, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-XX century.
Address: Relais Hôtel du Vieux Paris, 9, rue Git-le-Coeur, 6th arr., 75006 Paris, France (48.85391, 2.34285)
Type: Guest facility (open to public)
Phone: +33 1 44 32 15 90
Place
The Beat Hotel was a "class 13" hotel, meaning bottom line, a place that was required by law to meet only minimum health and safety standards. It never had any proper name – "the Beat Hotel" was a nickname given by Gregory Corso, which stuck. The rooms had windows facing the interior stairwell and not much light. Hot water was available Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The hotel offered the opportunity for a bath – in the only bathtub, situated on the ground floor – provided the guest reserved time beforehand and paid the surcharge for hot water. Curtains and bedspreads were changed and washed every spring. The linen was (in principle) changed every month. The Beat Hotel was managed by a married couple, Monsieur and Madame Rachou, from 1933. After the death of Monsieur Rachou in a traffic accident in 1957, Madame was the sole manager until the early months of 1963, when the hotel was closed. Besides letting rooms, the establishment had a small bistro on the ground floor. Due to early experiences with working at an inn frequented by Monet and Pissarro, Madame Rachou would encourage artists and writers to stay at the hotel and even at times permit them to pay the rent with paintings or manuscripts. One unusual thing that appealed to a clientele of bohemian artists was the permission to paint and decorate the rooms rented in whichever way they wanted. The hotel gained fame through the extended “family” of beat writers and artists who stayed there from the late 1950s to the early 1960s in a ferment of creativity. Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky first stayed there in 1957 and were soon joined by William S. Burroughs, Derek Raymond, Harold Norse and Gregory Corso, as well as Sinclair Beiles. It was here that Burroughs completed the text of “Naked Lunch” and began his lifelong collaboration with Brion Gysin. It was also where Ian Sommerville became Burroughs’ “systems advisor” and lover. Gysin introduced Burroughs to the Cut-up technique and with Sommerville they experimented with a “dream machine” and audio tape cut-ups. Here Norse wrote a novel, “Beat Hotel,” using cut-up techniques. Ginsberg wrote a part of his moving and mature poem “Kaddish” at the hotel and Corso wrote the mushroom cloud-shaped poem “Bomb.” There is now a small hotel, the four-star Relais du Vieux Paris, at that address. It displays photographs of several Beat personalities and describes itself as "The Beat Hotel.” In July 2009, as part of a major William Burroughs symposium, NakedLunch@50, a special tribute was held outside 9 Rue Gît-le-Coeur, with Jean-Jacques Lebel unveiling a plaque commemorative, now permanently hammered to the outside wall next to the main entrance, honoring the Beat Hotel’s seven most famous occupants: B. Gysin, H. Norse, G. Corso, A. Ginsberg, P. Orlovsky, I. Sommerville, W. Burroughs.
Life
Who: William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997)
William Burroughs moved into the rundown hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris in 1959 when “Naked Lunch” was still looking for a publisher. Tangier, with its easy access to drugs, small groups of homosexuals, growing political unrest, and an odd collection of criminals, had become increasingly unhealthy for Burroughs. He went to Paris to meet Ginsberg and talk with Olympia Press. In so doing, he left a brewing legal problem, which eventually transferred itself to Paris. Paul Lund, a British former career criminal and cigarette smuggler whom Burroughs met in Tangier, was arrested on suspicion of importing narcotics into France. Lund gave up Burroughs, and some evidence implicated Burroughs in the possible importation of narcotics into France. Once again, the man faced criminal charges, this time in Paris for conspiracy to import opiates, when the Moroccan authorities forwarded their investigation to French officials. Yet it was under this impending threat of criminal sanction that Maurice Girodias published “Naked Lunch;” the publication helped in getting Burroughs a suspended sentence, since a literary career, according to Ted Morgan, is a respected profession in France. The "Beat Hotel" was a typical European-style boarding house hotel, with common toilets on every floor, and a small place for personal cooking in the room. Life there was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who lived in the attic room. This shabby, inexpensive hotel was populated by Gregory Corso, Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky for several months after “Naked Lunch” first appeared. The actual process of publication was partly a function of its "cut-up" presentation to the printer. Girodias had given Burroughs only ten days to prepare the manuscript for print galleys, and Burroughs sent over the manuscript in pieces, preparing the parts in no particular order. When it was published in this authentically random manner, Burroughs liked it better than the initial plan. International rights to the work were sold soon after, and Burroughs used the $3,000 advance from Grove Press to buy drugs (equivalent to approximately $24,353 in today’s funds.) “Naked Lunch” was featured in a 1959 Life magazine cover story, partly as an article that highlighted the growing Beat literary movement. During this time Burroughs found an outlet for material otherwise rendered unpublishable in Jeff Nuttall’s My Own Mag. Also, some of Burroughs poetry appeared in the avant garde little magazine Nomad at the beginning of the 1960s. Ian Sommerville (1940–1976) was an electronics technician and computer programmer. He is primarily known through his association with William S. Burroughs’s circle of Beat Generation figures, and lived at Paris’s so-called "Beat Hotel" by 1960, when they were regulars there, becoming Burroughs’s lover and "systems adviser.” He died in a single-car accident due to inexperience near Bath, England in 1976 shortly after obtaining his first driving licence.

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Published on February 05, 2017 01:07

Joris-Karl Huysmans (February 5, 1848 - May 12, 1907)

Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as J.K. Huysmans. He is most famous for the novel À rebours. He supported himself by a 30-year career in the French civil service.
Born: February 5, 1848, Paris, France
Died: May 12, 1907, Paris, France
Education: Lycée Saint-Louis
Buried: Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Parents: Malvina Badin Huysmans, Godfried Huysmans

Tree-lined graveyard with the resting places of writers & artists including Sartre & Beckett.
Address: 3 Boulevard Edgar Quinet, 75014 Paris, France (48.83791, 2.32762)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Hours: Monday through Friday 8.00-18.00, Saturday 8.30-18.00, Sunday 9.00-18.00
Phone: +33 1 44 10 86 50
Place
Montparnasse Cemetery is a cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, part of the city’s 14th arrondissement. Created from three farms in 1824, the cemetery at Montparnasse was originally known as Le Cimetière du Sud (Southern Cemetery.)
Notable queer burials at Montparnasse:
• Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (1808-1889) was a French novelist and short story writer. He had a decisive influence on writers such as Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Henry James and Marcel Proust. When accused of sodomitical practices, D’Aurevilly reply was: “My tastes incline me to it, my principles permit it, but the ugliness of my contemporaries repels me.” He was transferred in 1926 to St Sauveur, le vicomte's cemetery, in Normandy.
• Marie Dorval (1798–1849), actress. In January 1833, female writer George Sand met Marie Dorval after the former wrote the actress a letter of appreciation following one of her performances. The two women became involved in an intimate friendship, and were rumored to have become lesbian lovers.
• Henry “Willy” Gauthier-Villars (1859–1931), writer and first husband of Colette. Willy and Colette had an affair unbeknownst to each other with the same woman, the American socialite Georgie Raoul-Duval, née Urquhart. Upon discovery, they made it a threesome and attended the Bayreuth festival together.
• Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907), author. Huysmans’ novel “À rebours” (Against the Grain or Against Nature or Wrong Way) (1884) became his most famous, or notorious. It featured the character of an aesthete, des Esseintes, and decisively broke from Naturalism. It was seen as an example of "decadent" literature. The description of des Esseintes’ "alluring liaison" with a "cherry-lipped youth" was believed to have influenced other writers of the decadent movement, including Oscar Wilde. It is now considered an important step in the formation of "gay literature.” “À rebours” gained notoriety as an exhibit in the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895. The prosecutor referred to it as a "sodomitical" book.
• Josie Mansfield (1847-1931), an American woman who became famous when one of her two wealthy lovers murdered the other. In 1873, Mansfield left New York for Paris with Ella Wesner, a male impersonator in Vaudeville. Mansfield and Wesner went to Paris and presided over a salon at the Café Américan. Wesner returned to the United States alone in the spring of 1873.
• Charles, Vicomte de Noailles (1891-1981) and his wife Marie-Laure (1902-1970), heiress of the Bischoffsheim banking fortune, are buried in the Bischoffsheim vault.
• Man Ray (1890–1976), American-born Dada & Surrealist artist and photographer
• Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933– December 28, 2004), American author & philosopher. Sontag lived with “H,” the writer and model Harriet Sohmers Zwerling whom she first met at U. C. Berkeley from 1958 to 1959. Afterwards, Sontag was the partner of María Irene Fornés, a Cuban-American avant garde playwright and director. Upon splitting with Fornes, she was involved with an Italian aristocrat, Carlotta Del Pezzo, and the German academic Eva Kollisch. Sontag was romantically involved with the American artists Jasper Johns and Paul Thek. During the early 1970s, Sontag lived with Nicole Stéphane, a Rothschild banking heiress turned movie actress, and, later, the choreographer Lucinda Childs. She also had a relationship with the writer Joseph Brodsky. With Annie Leibovitz, Sontag maintained a relationship stretching from the later 1980s until her final years.

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Published on February 05, 2017 00:54

John Asbury Zeigler, Jr (February 5, 1912 – October 2, 2015)

Lived: The Book Basement, 9 College Way, Charleston
Buried: Body donated to medical science, to The Medical University of South Carolina

The ground floor of 9 College Way, owned by relatives of John Zeigler, housed The Book Basement, the leading independent bookstore in the city of Charleston for decades; it was where most College of Charleston library books were purchased. It was owned and run by Edwin Peacock (1910-1989) and John Zeigler, (born 1912) one of the city’s most prominent gay couples. Not only was it a meeting place for various civil rights groups, but gay people visiting and passing through Charleston, including the likes of children’s author Maurice Sendak and Harlem Renaissance poet and writer Langston Hughes, stopped here and became friends of the owners. Edwin Peacock introduced bisexual southern writer Carson Smith (1917-1967) to her eventual husband Reeves McCullers. Carson McCullers is remembered today for “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” “The Member of the Wedding” and other works. Peacock was a good friend to her for her entire life, and some believe that Peacock, hard of hearing and universally pleasant to all, may have been an inspiration for John Singer, the central mute character in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” Peacock and Zeigler opened their bookstore on Carson’s birthday in 1946 and she was a frequent guest here. This might be the only site in Charleston mentioning a gay couple. Although their names are linked only as business partners, their names are together on the plaque in front of the building. Their relationship is detailed in Zeigler’s’ cycle of memorial poems, “The Edwin Poems” and in his autobiography, “Edwin and John: A Personal History of the American South.” A drawing of the building by gay artist Prentiss Taylor was often used on postcards advertising events at the store. Of further gay interest is the fact that John Zeigler appears renamed as “Nicky” in the book “Jeb and Dash: A Gay Life, 1918-1945” published from the diaries of Carter Bealer, edited by his niece Ina Russell.

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Published on February 05, 2017 00:51

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