Elisa Rolle's Blog, page 245

January 30, 2017

Howard Sturgis (January 30, 1855 – February 7, 1920)

Howard Overing Sturgis was an English-language novelist who wrote about same-sex love. Of American parentage, he lived and worked in Britain.
Born: January 30, 1855, London, United Kingdom
Died: February 7, 1920, Windsor, United Kingdom
Education: Eton College
University of Cambridge

Howard Overing Sturgis was an English writer. He attended Eton and Cambridge and was friends with Henry James (brother of Alice James) and Edith Wharton. After the death of his overwhelming mother in 1888, Sturgis settled with his life companion William Haynes-Smith (a distant relative, a companion who though many years younger, lived with him until Sturgis's death in 1920) in a newish house called Queen’s Acre, snugly cinched on the edge of the huge expanses of Windsor Great Park. Queen’s Acre‘s wide verandah seemed to some a reminder of the ‘piazza’ of a comfortable New England home, but it was really the commodious adaptation of Old England that was the point. All his friends referred to the house as Qu’Acre. His first two novels were successful as far as sales were concerned; his third, Belchamber, failed to gain the same plaudits, however, although Edith Wharton praised it. Sturgis went on to publish a short story and a memorial on his friend Anne Thackeray before his death in 1920.
Together from (before) 1888 to 1920: 32 years.
Howard Overing Sturgis (January 30, 1855 – February 7, 1920)
William Haynes-Smith (born in 1871)

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Published on January 30, 2017 00:35

Dorothy Thompson (July 9, 1893 – January 30, 1961)

Dorothy Celene Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt.
Born: July 9, 1893, New York City, New York, United States
Died: January 30, 1961, Lisbon, Portugal
Education: Syracuse University
Illinois Institute of Technology
Lived: 237 E. 48th St
Twin Farms, 452 Royalton Turnpike, Barnard, VT 05031, USA
Buried: Barnard Village Cemetery, Barnard, Windsor County, Vermont, USA
Spouse: Maxim Kopf (m. 1943–1961), Sinclair Lewis (m. 1928–1942), Joseph Bard (m. 1923–1927)
Children: Michael Lewis

Turtle Bay is a neighborhood in New York City, on the east side of Midtown Manhattan. It extends from either 41s or 43rd Streets to 53rd Street, and eastward from Lexington Avenue to the East River’s western branch, facing Roosevelt Island. The neighborhood is the site of the headquarters of the United Nations and the Chrysler Building. The Tudor City apartment complex is also considered to be within Turtle Bay.
Address: E 49th St, New York, NY 10017, USA
Type: Private Property
National Register of Historic Places: Turtle Bay Gardens Historic District (226-246 E. 49th St. and 227-245 E. 48th St.), 83001750, 1983
Place
An army enrollment office was established at Third Avenue and 46th Street, after the first Draft Act was passed during the American Civil War. On July 13, 1863, an angry mob burned the office to the ground and proceeded to riot through the surrounding neighborhood, destroying entire blocks. The New York Draft Riots continued for three days before army troops managed to contain the mob, which had burned and looted much of the city. After the war ended, the formerly pastoral neighborhood was developed with brownstones. By 1868 the bay had been entirely filled in by commercial overdevelopment, packed with breweries, gasworks, slaughterhouses, cattle pens, coal yards, and railroad piers. By the early XX century, Turtle Bay was "a riverside back yard" for the city, as the WPA Guide to New York City (1939) described it: "huge industrial enterprises— breweries, laundries, abattoirs, power plants— along the water front face squalid tenements not far away from new apartment dwellings attracted to the section by its river view and its central position. The numerous plants shower this district with the heaviest sootfall in the city— 150 tons to the square mile annually.” The huge Waterside Station, a power plant operated by the Consolidated Edison Company, producing 367,000 kilowatts of electricity in its coal-fired plant, marked the southern boundary of the neighborhood. There were also 18 acres (73,000 m2) of slaughterhouses along First Avenue. With an infusion of poor immigrants having had come in the later part of the XIX century, and the opening of the elevated train lines along Second and Third Avenues, the neighborhood went into decay with crumbling tenement buildings.
Notable queer residents at Turtle Bay:
• 525 Lexington Ave (between E. 48th and E. 49th, now the New York Marriot East Side): in 1925 Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz moved to the Shelton Hotel taking an apartment on the 30th floor of the new building. They would live here for 12 years. With a spectacular view, Georgia began to paint the city. The building was depicted in some of the works of these two legendary tenants, O’Keefe the painter and Stieglitz the photographer.
• No. 237 E. 48th St: Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961), a well-known foreign correspondent and author of "I Saw Hitler," was once married to writer Sinclair Lewis, but the great love of her life was Christa Winsloe, author of the novel upon which the classic lesbian film, "Madchen in Uniform" was based. After they broke up, Thompson lived alone in this three-story brownstone from 1941 to 1957. She spent more than $20,000 for renovations to make it, as she wrote, “the most perfect small house I have ever seen.” Thompson’s “small” home included a library with more than 3,000 books, five fireplaces, and a third-floor study for writing. In the drawing room, a wine-colored satin sofa could hold, she bragged, five of “the most distinguished bottoms in New York.” In the front door were eight painted glass panels showing Thompson in medieval attire performing various tasks – writing, lecturing, greeting guests. There was also the house’s motto: “Gallus in sterquilinio suo plurimum potest.” (“The rooster on his own dunghill is very much in charge.”)
• No. 246 E. 49th St: Stephen Sondheim has been a long-time resident of the Turtle Bay Gardens. Sondheim (born 1930) has spoken in the past of feeling like an outsider – “somebody who people want to both kiss and kill” – from quite early on in his life. He spent some 25 years – from his thirties through his fifties – in analysis, did not come out as gay until he was about 40, and did not live with a partner, a dramatist named Peter Jones, until he was 61. They separated in 1999. Since 2004 he has been in a relationship with Jeff Romley (born 1978.) In 1969, while he was playing music, he heard a knock on the door. His neighbor, Katharine Hepburn, was in "bare feet – this angry, red-faced lady" and told him "You have been keeping me awake all night!" (she was practicing for her musical debut in Coco). When Sondheim asked why she had not asked him to play for her, she said she lost his phone number. According to Sondheim, "My guess is that she wanted to stand there in her bare feet, suffering for her art".
• No. 244 E. 49 St.: Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) lived in the apartment at 244 East 49th Street in the Turtle Bay neighborhood for more than 60 years. After her death in 2003, her beloved four-story brownstone was sold sight-unseen to a fan in 2004 for $3.9 million. According to the listing for the renting, the home has been renovated, but “the original mirrored dressing room area retains the glitter.” There is a formal entry, spacious living room, a parlor floor and the master bedroom/bath on the third floor and guest bedrooms on the fourth floor. Behind the brownstone are communal gardens — Turtle Bay Gardens — which are shared by other rowhome owners on East 49th and East 48th Streets. The city honored Hepburn by renaming the nearby intersection of Second Avenue and East 49th Street “Katharine Hepburn Place.” Nearby, in the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, is a garden dedicated to her — the Katharine Hepburn Garden – which contains 12 stepping stones inscribed with quotes by Hepburn.
• No. 211 E. 49th St.: Amster Yard, located at East 49th Street between Second and Third Avenues. James Amster had first set eyes on what would become Amster Yard back in 1944 when, after a dinner party, two other guests who were in real estate business took him to see some “down-in-the-heels properties,” as he called them. An old tenement, boarding house, and a carpenter’s workshop ringed a debris-filled yard. But the creative Amster immediately saw potential in the site. Within two years, on a May evening in 1946, Amster was ready to unveil his charming Amster Yard with a grand party attended by some 700 clients, friends and the press. Eugenia Sheppard, writing for the New York Herald Tribune, described her gracious and handsome host as “a man with great romantic flair” and Amster Yard as “pretty and perfect… inside and out.” It was Amster’s dream to make Amster Yard a center of the design profession, and the earliest residents of its six apartments included the Yard’s architect, Sterner, and his wife, Paula; art patron Leonard Hanna; interior designer Billy Baldwin; artist Isamu Noguchi; fahion designer Norman Norell; as well as Amster, of course. Robert Moyer, Jimmy Amster’s partner for 41 years, stayed on at Amster Yard after Amster died in 1986 moving out in 1992.
• No. 109 E. 42nd St.: Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller occupied rooms at the Hotel Commodore in the first two months of their stay in America in July 1925. The Hotel Commodore (today the Grand Hyatt) was a modest place, at 42nd street, which formed a part of Grand Central Station and just a few steps away from the MGM office at Broadway.

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Published on January 30, 2017 00:32

Damia (December 5, 1889 – January 30, 1978)

Marie-Louise Damien, better known by the stage name Damia, was a French singer and actress.
Born: December 5, 1889, Paris, France
Died: January 30, 1978, La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France
Buried: Cimetière de Pantin, Pantin, Departement de Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France, France
Albums: La Tragédienne de la chanson, more
Genres: World, Pop
Record labels: Marianne Melodie, Frémeaux & Associés, more

Vast tree-lined burial site with famous names including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison & Maria Callas.
Address: 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, France (48.86139, 2.39332)
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 55 25 82 10
Place
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris (44 hectares or 110 acres), though there are larger cemeteries in the city’s suburbs. Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement and is notable for being the first garden cemetery, as well as the first municipal cemetery. It is also the site of three WWI memorials. The cemetery is on Boulevard de Ménilmontant. The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste on line 2 is next to the main entrance, while the station called Père Lachaise, on both lines 2 and 3, is 500 metres away near a side entrance that has been closed to the public. Many tourists prefer the Gambetta station on line 3, as it allows them to enter near the tomb of Oscar Wilde and then walk downhill to visit the rest of the cemetery. Père Lachaise Cemetery was opened on May 21, 1804. The first person buried there was a five-year-old girl named Adélaïde Paillard de Villeneuve, the daughter of a door bell-boy of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Her grave no longer exists as the plot was a temporary concession. Napoleon, who had been proclaimed Emperor by the Senate three days earlier, had declared during the Consulate that "Every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion.”
Notable queer burials at Père Lachaise:
• Louise Abbéma (1853-1927) was a French painter, sculptor, and designer of the Belle Époque. She first received recognition for her work at age 23 when she painted a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, her lifelong friend and possibly her lover.
• Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a French stage and early film actress.
• Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), Nathalie Micas (1824-1889) and Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (1856-1942), buried together.
• Jean Börlin (1893-1930) was a Swedish dancer and choreographer born in Härnösand. He worked with Michel Fokine, who was his teacher in Stockholm. Jean Borlin was a principal dancer of the Royal Swedish Ballet when Rolf de Mare brought him to Paris in in 1920 as first dancer and choreographer of the Ballets Suedois at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees. According to Paul Colin, de Mare “was very rich” and he had brought the Swedish Ballet to Paris “especially to show his young lover, Jean Borlin.” The Stockholm press derided de Mare's sexual orientation. In contrast, open-minded Paris welcomed the Ballets Suedois. One wonders what might have happened if de Mare had not disbanded the company in 1925, reportedly because its recent performances had disappointed him. But he had a new lover. Borlin's last years were melancholy. By 1925, he was exhausted: he had choreographed all 23 ballets in his company's repertory and danced in each of its 900 performances -- a grueling schedule that led him to alcohol and drugs. In 1930, he opened a school in New York but died of heart failure shortly thereafter. He was only 37. He was buried at his own wish in the cemetery of Pére Lachaise in Paris in January l931. A stricken de Mare founded Les Archives Internationales de Danse, in his memory.
• Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824) 1st Duke of Parma, later 1st Duke of Cambacérès, was a French lawyer and statesman during the French Revolution and the First Empire, best remembered as the author of the Napoleonic Code, which still forms the basis of French civil law and inspired civil law in many countries. The common belief that Cambacérès is responsible for decriminalizing homosexuality in France is in error. Cambacérès was not responsible for ending the legal prosecution of homosexuals. He did play a key role in drafting the Code Napoléon, but this was a civil law code. He had nothing to do with the Penal Code of 1810, which covered sexual crimes. Before the French Revolution, sodomy had been a capital crime under royal legislation. The penalty was burning at the stake. Very few men, however, were ever actually prosecuted and executed for consensual sodomy (no more than five in the entire XVIII century). Sodomites arrested by the police were more usually released with a warning or held in prison for (at most) a few weeks or months. The National Constituent Assembly abolished the law against sodomy when it revised French criminal law in 1791 and got rid of a variety of offenses inspired by religion, including blasphemy. Cambacérès was a homosexual, his sexual orientation was well-known, and he does not seem to have made any effort to conceal it. He remained unmarried, and kept to the company of other bachelors. Napoleon is recorded as making a number of jokes on the subject. Robert Badinter once mentioned in a speech to the French National Assembly, during debates on reforming the homosexual age of consent, that Cambacérès was known in the gardens of the Palais-Royal as "tante Turlurette".
• Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 1873-1954) was a French novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. She embarked on a relationship with Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf ("Missy"), with whom she sometimes shared the stage.
• Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée Daudet, and writers Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet. Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to Jean-Yves Tadié, Lucien Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust. They shared at least a friendship (if not a sexual relationship), which was revealed by Jean Lorrain in his chronicle in the Journal. It is for this indiscretion that Proust and Lorrain fought a duel in 1897. Daudet was also friends with Jean Cocteau.
• Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) was an American dancer. Bisexual she had a daughter by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and a son by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. She had relationships with Eleonara Duse and Mercedes de Acosta. She married the Russian bisexual poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior.
• Joseph Fiévée (1767-1839) was a French journalist, novelist, essayist, playwright, civil servant (haut fonctionnaire) and secret agent. Joseph Fiévée married in 1790 (his brother-in-law was Charles Frédéric Perlet), but his wife died giving birth, leaving him one child. At the end of the 1790s, he met the writer Théodore Leclercq who became his life companion, and the two would live and raise Fiévée’s son together. When becoming Préfet, Fiévée and Leclercq moved to the Nièvre department, and their open relationship greatly shocked some locals. The two men were received together in the salons of the Restoration. Both men are buried in the same tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
• Loie Fuller (1862–1928) was an American dancer who was a pioneer of both modern dance and theatrical lighting techniques. Fuller supported other pioneering performers, such as fellow United States-born dancer Isadora Duncan. Fuller helped Duncan ignite her European career in 1902 by sponsoring independent concerts in Vienna and Budapest. She was cremated and her ashes are interred in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her sister, Mollie Fuller, had a long career as an actress and vaudeville performer.
• Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who was part of the beginning of the Romantic movement by adding elements of eroticism through his paintings. According to the scholar Diana Knight, over the years Girodet’s homosexuality became widely known.
• Eileen Gray (1878–1976) was an Irish furniture designer and architect and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. Gray was bisexual. She mixed in the lesbian circles of the time, being associated with Romaine Brooks, Gabrielle Bloch, Loie Fuller, the singer Damia and Natalie Barney. Gray's intermittent relationship with Damia (or Marie-Louise Damien) ended in 1938, after which they never saw each other again, although both lived into their nineties in the same city. Damia died at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, a western suburb of Paris, and was interred in the Cimetière de Pantin (163 Avenue Jean Jaurès, 93500 Aubervilliers). Today, she is considered to be the third greatest singer of chansons réalistes, after Edith Piaf and Barbara.
• Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer.
• Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) was an Anglo-German count, diplomat, writer, and patron of modern art. In his introduction to “Berlin Lights” (2000) Ian Buruma asserted Kessler was homosexual and struggled his whole life to conceal it.
• Boris Yevgen'yevich Kochno (1904-1990), was hired as the personal secretary to Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the famed Ballets Russes. He served in this capacity until Diaghilev's death in 1929. In addition to his other duties, he also wrote several ballet libretti for the troupe. He died in 1990 in Paris following a fall. He was buried next to Wladimir Augenblick who died in 2001.
• Marie Laurencin (1883-1956) was a French painter and printmaker. She became an important figure in the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or. She became romantically involved with the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and has often been identified as his muse. In addition, Laurencin had important connections to the salon of the American expatriate and famed lesbian writer Natalie Clifford Barney. She had heterosexual and lesbian affairs. During WWI, Laurencin left France for exile in Spain with her German-born husband, Baron Otto von Waëtjen, since through her marriage she had automatically lost her French citizenship. The couple subsequently lived together briefly in Düsseldorf. After they divorced in 1920, she returned to Paris, where she achieved financial success as an artist until the economic depression of the 1930s. During the 1930s she worked as an art instructor at a private school. She lived in Paris until her death.
• Mary Elizabeth Clarke Mohl (1793–1883) was a British writer who was known as a salon hostess in Paris. She was known by her nickname of "Clarkey". She was admired for her independence and conversation. She eventually married the orientalist Julius von Mohl. She was an ardent Francophile, a feminist, and a close friend of Florence Nightingale. She wrote about her interest in the history of women's rights. She was buried with her husband, Julius von Mohl, at Père Lachaise Cemetery (56th division).
• Mathilde (Missy) de Morny (1863-1944), a French noblewoman, artist and transgender figure, she became a lover of several women in Paris, including Liane de Pougy and Colette.
• Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) was a French composer and pianist. The biographer Richard D. E. Burton comments that, in the late 1920s, Poulenc might have seemed to be in an enviable position: professionally successful and independently well-off, having inherited a substantial fortune from his father. He bought a large country house, Le Grande Coteau (Chemin Francis Poulenc, 37210 Noizay), 140 miles (230 km) south-west of Paris, where he retreated to compose in peaceful surroundings. Yet he was troubled, struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, which was predominantly gay. His first serious affair was with the painter Richard Chanlaire, to whom he sent a copy of the Concert champêtre score inscribed, "You have changed my life, you are the sunshine of my thirty years, a reason for living and working". Nevertheless, while this affair was in progress Poulenc proposed marriage to his friend Raymonde Linossier. As she was not only well aware of his homosexuality but was also romantically attached elsewhere, she refused him, and their relationship became strained. He suffered the first of many periods of depression, which affected his ability to compose, and he was devastated in January 1930, when Linossier died suddenly at the age of 32. On her death he wrote, "All my youth departs with her, all that part of my life that belonged only to her. I sob ... I am now twenty years older". His affair with Chanlaire petered out in 1931, though they remained lifelong friends. On 30 January 1963, at his flat opposite the Jardin du Luxembourg, Poulenc suffered a fatal heart attack. His funeral was at the nearby church of Saint-Sulpice. In compliance with his wishes, none of his music was performed; Marcel Dupré played works by Bach on the grand organ of the church. Poulenc was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, alongside his family.
• Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel “À la recherche du temps perdu” (In Search of Lost Time), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. Also his friend and sometime lover, Reynaldo Hahn is buried here.
• Raymond Radiguet (1903–1923) was a French novelist and poet whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes, and unique style and tone. In early 1923, Radiguet published his first and most famous novel, “Le Diable au corps” (The Devil in the Flesh). The story of a young married woman who has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy while her husband is away fighting at the front provoked scandal in a country that had just been through WWI. Though Radiguet denied it, it was established later that the story was in large part autobiographical. He associated himself with the Modernist set, befriending Picasso, Max Jacob, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and especially Jean Cocteau, who became his mentor. Radiguet also had several well-documented relationships with women. An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as "Monsieur Bébé" – Mister Baby) with decadence for his tryst with a model: "Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes." ("Baby is depraved. He likes women.") Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer "who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil." Aldous Huxley is quoted as declaring that Radiguet had attained the literary control that others required a long career to reach. On December 12, 1923, Radiguet died at age 20 in Paris of typhoid fever, which he contracted after a trip he took with Cocteau. Cocteau, in an interview with The Paris Review stated that Radiguet had told him three days prior to his death that, "In three days, I am going to be shot by the soldiers of God." In reaction to this death Francis Poulenc wrote, "For two days I was unable to do anything, I was so stunned". In her 1932 memoir, “Laughing Torso,” British artist Nina Hamnett describes Radiguet's funeral: "The church was crowded with people. In the pew in front of us was the negro band from the Boeuf sur le Toit. Picasso was there, Brâncuși and so many celebrated people that I cannot remember their names. Radiguet's death was a terrible shock to everyone. Coco Chanel, the celebrated dressmaker, arranged the funeral. It was most wonderfully done. Cocteau was too ill to come." ... "Cocteau was terribly upset and could not see anyone for weeks afterwards.”
• Mlle Raucourt (1756-1815) was a French actress.
• Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross (1869-1918), who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950.
• Salomon James de Rothschild (1835–1864) was a French banker and socialite. He was the father of Baroness Hélène van Zuylen.
• Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) wrote and published some of his most important work between 1900 and 1914, and then from 1920 to 1921 traveled around the world. He continued to write for the next decade, but when his fortune finally gave out, he made his way to a hotel in Palermo, Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes (Via Roma, 398, 90139 Palermo), where he died of a barbiturate overdose in 1933, aged 56.
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early XX century. They are buried together.
• Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957), Russian-born surrealist painter. Loved by Edith Sitwell, he then in turn fell in love with Charles Henry Ford and moved with him in New York City.
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a succession of Père Lachaise Cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a 40 minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.

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Published on January 30, 2017 00:25

January 29, 2017

More Adey (1858 – January 29, 1942)

William More Adey, known universally as More Adey, was an English art critic, editor and aesthete. He was a co-editor of the Burlington Magazine, but is perhaps best known for having been a friend and ...
Born: 1858
Died: 1942
Lived: 24 Hornton Street, W8
15 Vicarage Gardens, W8

More Adey (1858-1942), friend of Oscar Wilde, lived with Robert Ross at 24 Hornton Street, W8 in 1905, and at 15 Vicarage Gardens, W8 from 1906 to 1908.
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906315/?...

Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228833
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906315/?...
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1KZBO/?...

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Published on January 29, 2017 00:41

Marie-Laure de Noailles (October 31, 1902 – January 29, 1970)

Marie-Laure de Noailles, Vicomtesse de Noailles was a French artist, regarded one of the 20th century's most daring and influential patrons of the arts, noted for her associations with Salvador Dalí, ...
Born: October 31, 1902, Paris, France
Died: January 29, 1970, Paris, France
Buried: Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Spouse: Charles de Noailles (m. 1923–1970)
Movies: Age of Gold
Parents: Maurice Bischoffsheim, Francis de Croisset, Marie-Thérèse de Chevigné, Marie-Thérèse Bischoffsheim
Children: Nathalie de Noailles, Laure de Noailles

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 January 29, 2017 00:39

Elihu Vedder (February 26, 1836 – January 29, 1923)

Elihu Vedder was an American symbolist painter, book illustrator, and poet, born in New York City. He is best known for his fifty-five illustrations for Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Born: February 26, 1836, New York City, New York, United States
Died: January 29, 1923, Rome
Buried: Campo Cestio, Rome, Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale, Lazio, Italy, Plot: 1051 Zona Prima
Periods: Symbolism, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Tile Club
Known for: Drawing, Oil painting, Mural

Elihu Vedder decorated the hallway of the Reading Room of the Washington Library of Congress, and his mural paintings can still be seen there.
Address: Hallway of the Reading Room of the Washington Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave SE, Washington, DC 20540, USA (38.88868, -77.00471)
Type: Library (open to public)
Hours: Monday through Saturday 8.30-17.00
Phone: +1 202-707-5000
National Register of Historic Places: 66000000, 1965. Also National Historic Landmarks.
Place
The Library of Congress reasserted itself during the latter half of the XIX century under Librarian Ainsworth Rand Spofford, who directed the Library from 1865 to 1897. Aided by an overall expansion of the federal government and a favorable political climate, Spofford built broad bipartisan support for the Library as a national library and a legislative resource, began comprehensively collecting Americana and American literature, and led the construction of a new building to house the Library, and transformed the Librarian of Congress position into one of strength and independence. Between 1865 and 1870, Congress appropriated funds for the construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building, placed all copyright registration and deposit activities under the Library’s control, and restored the Library’s international book exchange. The Library also acquired the vast libraries of both the Smithsonian and historian Peter Force, strengthening its scientific and Americana collections significantly. By 1876, the Library of Congress had 300,000 volumes and was tied with Boston Public Library as the nation’s largest library. When the Library moved from the Capitol building to its new headquarters in 1897, it had over 840,000 volumes, 40% of which had been acquired through copyright deposit. A year before the Library’s move to its new location, the Joint Library Committee held a session of hearings to assess the condition of the Library and plan for its future growth and possible reorganization. Spofford and six experts sent by the American Library Association, including future Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam and Melvil Dewey of the New York State Library, testified before the committee that the Library should continue its expansion towards becoming a true national library. Based on the hearings and with the assistance of Senators Justin Morrill of Vermont and Daniel Voorhees of Indiana, Congress more than doubled the Library’s staff from 42 to 108 and established new administrative units for all aspects of the Library’s collection. Congress also strengthened the office of Librarian of Congress to govern the Library and make staff appointments, as well as requiring Senate approval for presidential appointees to the position.
Life
Who: Elihu Vedder (February 26, 1836 – January 29, 1923)
Elihu Vedder was a symbolist painter, book illustrator, and poet, born in New York City. He is best known for his fifty-five illustrations for Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (deluxe edition, published by Houghton Mifflin.) Vedder trained in New York City with Tompkins H. Matteson, then in Paris with François-Édouard Picot. Finally, he completed his studies in Italy - where he was strongly influenced not only by Italian Renaissance work but also by the modern Macchiaioli painters and the living Italian landscape. He first visited Italy from 1858 until 1860, becoming deeply emotionally attached to fellow painter Giovanni Costa. Their idyllic trips through the Italian countryside were cut short because Vedder’s father cut off his financial allowance. Elihu had a home in Rome and - after the financial success of his 1884 Rubaiyat work - on the Isle of Capri, then a haven for male aesthetes. Vedder visited England many times, and was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, and was a friend of Simeon Solomon. He was also influenced by the work of English and Irish mystics such as William Blake and William Butler Yeats. In 1890 Vedder helped establish the In Arte Libertas group in Italy. Vedder occasionally returned to the United States, but lived only in Italy from 1906 until his death on January 29, 1923. He is buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. There are no known living descendants of Elihu Vedder as both surviving children died without issue.

Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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The Cimitero Acattolico ("Non-Catholic Cemetery") of Rome, often referred to as the Cimitero dei protestanti ("Protestant Cemetery") or Cimitero degli Inglesi ("Englishmen's Cemetery"), is a public cemetery in the rione of Testaccio in Rome.
Address: Via Caio Cestio, 6, 00153 Roma, Italy (41.8763, 12.4795)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Phone: +39 06 574 1900
Place
The Protestant Cemetery is near Porta San Paolo and adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a small-scale Egyptian-style pyramid built in 30 BC as a tomb and later incorporated into the section of the Aurelian Walls that borders the cemetery. It was formerly called Cimitero Anticattolico, the anti-Catholic cemetery. It has Mediterranean cypress, pomegranate and other trees, and a grassy meadow. It is the final resting place of non-Catholics including but not exclusive to Protestants or British people. The earliest known burial is that of a University of Oxford student named Langton in 1738. The English poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley are buried there.
Notable queer burials at Campo Cestio:
• Hendrik Christian Andersen (April 15, 1872 – December 19, 1940), sculptor, friend of Henry James. A bust of the young Count Alberto Bevilacqua, a muse of sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen, remains in the home of Henry James, Lamb House, in Rye, England. Henry James to Henrik Andersen, three years later, upon the death of Andersen’s brother: “The sense that I can’t help you, see you, talk to you, touch you, hold you close & long, or do anything to make you rest on my, & feel my deep participation – this torments me, dearest boy, makes my ache for you, & for myself; makes me gnash my teeth & groan at the bitterness of things. . . . This is the one thought that relieves me about you a little – & I wish you might fix your eyes on it for the idea, just, of the possibility. I am in town for a few weeks, but return to Rye Apr. 1, & sooner or later to have you there & do for you, to put my arm round you & make you lean on me as on a brother & a lover, & keep you on & on, slowly comforted or at least relieved of the bitterness of pain – this I try to imagine as thinkable, attainable, not wholly out of the question.”
• Dario Bellezza (1944–1996), Italian poet, author and playwright
• Enrico Coleman (1846–1911), artist and orchid-lover, friend of Giovanni “Nino” Costa (who was special friend with Elihu Vedder)
• Gregory Corso (1930–2001), American beat generation poet
• The tomb of Maria Bollvillez (Zona V.7.18) was the first of de Fauveau’s commissions from the Russian aristocracy. Félicie de Fauveau (1801–1886) was a XIX-century French sculptor who was a precursor of the pre-Raphaelite style. Her multiple sculptural works showcase a variety of techniques and mediums including marble, stone, glass and bronze. Her family connections to the restored Bourbon court of Charles X led to commissions that helped launch her early career in Paris. But in 1830 when Charles X was forced to abdicate, de Fauveau paid for her opposition to the new order by being imprisoned for three months and then, in 1833, went into exile in Florence. She made a striking figure on arrival there: as Ary Scheffer’s portrait shows, she had adopted an androgynous appearance, with cropped hair and male clothing. One visitor reported that she had vowed to keep her hair short until the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France (it never was). Her admirers included Italian opera singer Angelica Catalani and Elizabeth and Robert Browning, who had also made their home in Florence. De Fauveau’s works were coveted by the city’s Russian ex-pats including Anatole Demidoff; the artist received multiple commissions from the industrialist and enjoyed the friendship of his wife Caroline Bonaparte. The Tsar Nicolas I purchased various works from the artist and his daughter Maria Nikolaieva was given a dagger, now at the Louvre, whose handle is engraved with scenes from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Guy Cogeval (Musée d’Orsay) uses the word lesbienne (lesbian) in his introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition “The Amazon of sculpture”, whereas Christophe Vital mentions on the adjacent page that Félicie de Fauveau was sans doute (without doubt) in love with the young (male) page who died in the Vendée (Charles de Bonnechose, for whom Félicie designed a monument on her prison wall). Michelle Facos also explicitly suggests that Félicie de Fauveau might have been a lesbian in her “Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art” ( 2011). Usually her relationship to the Countess de la Rochejaquelein is then referred to.
• Denham Fouts (1914-1948), referenced in literary works by Christopher Isherwood, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal. He was also a friend of George Platt Lynes, who photographed him. Isherwood described him as a mythic figure, "the most expensive male prostitute in the world." Fouts died in 1948, at the Pensione Foggetti, in Rome, at the age of 35.
• Wilhelm von Humboldt (1794–1803), son of the German diplomat and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt and nephew of Alexander von Humboldt
• Hans von Marées (1837–1887), German painter
• Dora Ohlfsen (1878-1948) was born as Dorothea Ohlfsen-Bagge in Ballarat, Victoria. Her father was Norwegian, Christian Herm Ohlfsen-Bagge, probably born in Schleswig (northern Germany now), and her mother, Kate Harison, Australian. She claimed that her great-grandfather was the Sydney convict printer, Robert Howe. Dora was educated at Sydney Girls High School and studied piano privately with Max Volgrich and Henri Kowalski. She traveled to Germany in 1883 to continue her piano studies under Moritz Moszkowski in Berlin; however, when she contracted neuritis, she began teaching music in Germany and later in Russia, after completing piano studies at Theodor Kullak’s Neue Akademie der Tonkunst. She lived in St Petersburg with a Madame Kerbitz and took up painting; she sold one of her work to the Czarina. Her extentive knowledge of languages gained her employement with the American ambassador and allowed her to write on music, theatre, drama and art for Russian and American newspaper. After traveling through various Baltic countries, she settled in Rome to study sculpture at the French Academy and with French engraver, Pierre Dautel. She produced many medallions using academic portraits, included Lord Chelmsford, Sir James Fairfax and General Peppino Garibaldi, and Symbolyst compositions. Church commissions came from Cardinal O’Connell of Boston and Josef Alteneisel, Prince-Bishop of Brixen in the Tyrol. The medallion in bas-relief of the Prince Bishop of Brizen, Tyrol, is among her finest productions. It has been praised in the French and Italian papers as "the wonderful achievement of a beautiful young Australian, who has only studied art for a comparatively short time" (June 10 1908). During WWI she became a Red Cross nurse in Italy. The Fascist government were patrons of her work and she produced a large relief portrait medallion of Mussolini and a war memorial, “Sacrificio,” at Formia, in 1924-26. Ohlfsen was commissioned by Mussolini to design this memorial because her art studies had been solely in Italy and she had nursed Italian soldiers during the war. This is the only work of its kind in Italy to be made by a woman or a foreigner. William Moore in the Brisbane Courier of 8 March 1930 referred to her as the artist who modelled a bust of Nellie Stewart; she also sculpted the head of W.A. Holman in plaster. In 1948, she and her companion, the Russian Baroness Hélène de Kuegelgen (1879-1948), were found gassed in her studio in Rome at Via di S. Nicola da Tolentino, 00187 Roma, close to the Spanish Steps. They had been living at that address, in an area traditionally associated with artists’ studios, for nearly half a century. Police said the deaths were accidental. Hélène de Kuegelgen was the daughter of Pavel Kuegelgen and Alexandra, nee Zhudlovsky. They had moved to Italy in 1902 from St. Petersburg, a city they both loved but which they accurately saw as being on the brink of revolution. Hélène (Elena) was from a well-connected family of Balten Germans, with one uncle a physician to the Tsar and another editor of the Petersburger German newspaper. Her family also boasted several prominent artists, two of them court painters. Dora and Hélène are buried together. A relief bust of the god Dionysius, one hand raised in a gesture of blessing, watches over one of the most distinctive graves in the Cemetery (Zone 1.15.28). Ohlfsen's work is represented in the collections of the British Museum and the Petit Palais in Paris, and in Australian collections including Museum Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
• John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), English poet and critic
• Pavel Fedorovich Tchelitchew (1898-1957), Russian surrealist painter, long-time partner of Charles Henri Ford. Campo Cestio is the original burial place, he was then moved to Cimetière du Père Lachaise in Paris.
• Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge (1887-1983), died in Rome in 1963; she had left written instructions that her coffin be placed in the vault in Highgate Cemetery where Hall and Batten had been buried, but the instructions were discovered too late. She is buried in the English Cemetery in Rome, and on her coffin is inscribed "Una Vincenzo Troubridge, the friend of Radclyffe Hall".
• Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), American painter, sculptor, graphic artist
• Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the American South, and American expatriates in Europe. In 1893 Woolson rented an elegant apartment on the Grand Canal of Venice. Suffering from influenza and depression, she either jumped or fell to her death from a fourth story window in the apartment in January 1894, surviving for about an hour after the fall She is also memorialized by Anne's Tablet on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

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Published on January 29, 2017 00:32

Anne Morgan (July 25, 1873 - January 29, 1952)

Anne Tracy Morgan was an American philanthropist who provided relief efforts in aid to France during and after World War I and World War II. Morgan was educated privately, traveled frequently and grew up amongst the wealth her father had amassed.
Born: July 25, 1873, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
Died: January 29, 1952, Mount Kisco, New York, United States
Lived: 3 Sutton Pl, New York, NY 10022, USA (40.75738, -73.96029)
Château de Blérancourt, 33 Place du Général Leclerc, 02300 Blérancourt, France (49.51772, 3.15378)
The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at East 36th Street
Buried: Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA
Parents: J. P. Morgan
Siblings: J. P. Morgan Jr.
Grandparents: Junius Spencer Morgan, Juliet Pierpont
Nephews: Henry Sturgis Morgan, Junius Spencer Morgan III

Anne Morgan was an American philanthropist, daughter of John Pierpont Morgan. In 1903, she became part owner of the Villa Trianon near Versailles, France, along with decorator and socialite Elsie de Wolfe and theatrical/literary agent Bessie Marbury. Morgan was instrumental in assisting De Wolfe, her close friend, in pioneering a career in interior decoration. The three women, affectionately known as "The Versailles Triumvirate," hosted a famous salon in France and, in 1903, along with Anne Harriman, helped organize the Colony Club, the first women's social club in New York City and, later, helped found the exclusive neighborhood of Sutton Place along Manhattan's East River. In 1915, she established the American Fund for French Wounded (AFFW) to provide medical supplies to French hospitals and send parcels to wounded soldiers. Anne Murray Dike, a doctor, joined her. In 1916, Morgan and De Wolfe largely funded Cole Porter’s first Broadway musical, See America First, produced by Marbury. In 1919, Anne Morgan bought the estate of Blérancourt. It was transformed into a museum and inaugurated in 1930, one year after the death of Anne Murray Dike.
Together from 1915 to 1929: 14 years.
Anne Tracy Morgan (July 25, 1873 - January 29, 1952)
Anne Murray Dike (1879-1929)

Queer Places, Vol. 3 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906695
ISBN-10: 1532906692
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228901
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532906692/?...
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Sutton Place first became fashionable around 1920, when several wealthy socialites, including Anne Harriman Vanderbilt and Anne Morgan, built townhouses on the eastern side of the street, overlooking the East River. Both townhouses were designed by Mott B. Schmidt, launching a career that included many houses for the wealthy.
Address: Sutton Pl, New York, NY 10022, USA (40.75738, -73.96029)
Type: Historic Street (open to public)
National Register of Historic Places: Sutton Place Historic District (1--21 Sutton Pl. & 4--16 Sutton Sq.), 85002294, 1985
Place
Elisabeth Marbury, the wealthy literary agent and producer who had been born into an aristocratic family, commissioned society architect Mott Schmidt to transform a Victorian rowhouse at No. 13 Sutton Place into a Georgian residence. She moved in with her long-time companion, decorator Elsie de Wolfe, and began a campaign of convincing her other female friends to follow suit. One of those friends was Anne Vanderbilt whose husband, William K. Vanderbilt died on July 22, 1920, making Anne a widow for the third time. New York society was shocked when, on January 9, 1921, a New York Times headline reported that “Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt to Live In Avenue A.” She had sold her gargantuan Fifth Avenue mansion for $3 million to move to what the newspaper called “a little-known two-block thoroughfare.” She used $50,000 of the $3 million to purchase Effingham Sutton’s house, No. 1, and, like Elisabeth Marbury, who was already living there, hired Mott B. Schmidt to renovate it into a 13-room Georgian mansion. Anne Vanderbilt’s close friend, 38-year old Anne Tracy Morgan, daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan, announced her plans to have Mott Schmidt create a house abutting the new Vanderbilt house. “Miss Morgan’s new home is being altered, to conform somewhat to the Colonial style of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s house, after which type most of the houses in the exclusive-little nook have been patterned,” said The Times. “Many of the rooms will contain rare old paneling and furniture. Some of these furnishings will be brought from abroad, but much of it will be Colonial. It is expected that the cost of the site and the remodeling will be about $125,000.” By now the neighborhood was filling with single and very wealthy women who were keeping Mott and Elsie de Wolfe busy changing XIX century middle class homes into fashionable neo-Georgian residences. Anne Vanderbilt’s sister, Mrs. Stephen Olin, was already here as were Mrs. Lorillard Cammann and Francis B. Griswold. Sutton Place was dubbed “The Amazon Enclave.” Two months later Mott Schmidt filed revised plans for Anne Morgan’s house at No. 3 Sutton Place. She had purchased the house next door, No. 5, and the original plans were scrapped so that the two houses could be merged. “The new plans call for the rebuilding of the two structures into a four-story dwelling in American Colonial style with a roof garden,” reported The Times. Reflecting their close relationship, Morgan and Vanderbilt would share a common garden to the rear. To create the illusion of a vintage home, Mott reused the bricks from the old buildings on the site. An elevator, in-house incinerator, gas furnace and refrigerators brought the home squarely into the modern age. Mott based the design on two Philadelphia houses; the 1765 Samuel Powel House and its neighbor, the Benjamin Wister Morris House. He treated the Morgan house and the Vanderbilt house as two independent but critically-related designs. A critic assessed them saying “No more valuable or successful examples of the consistent and intelligent use of English architectural precedent in the designing of American houses are to be found than these two houses on Sutton Place.” The house was completed in 1922 and House & Garden praised Morgan for her choice of XVIII Century interiors. “There are hundreds of beautiful drawing rooms in New York, but I know of no one but Miss Morgan who has determined to make the largest and most important room in her house an early American one. She is using an old pine paneled room, such as were often seen in old Southern houses. The New England pine rooms were usually much smaller and the paneling was generally more severe.” The house of Anne Morgan on Sutton Place was purchased after her death by Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr., the great-grandson of the founder of Corning Glass. Twenty years later, Houghton donated the house to the United Nations Association of the United States. The association leased it to the United Nations for a year as the home of the Secretary General, then sold it to the organization in 1973. Today the stately home of Anne Morgan remains the home of the U.N.’s Secretary General. Its colonial façade, along with those of its neighbors built by independent-thinking women who broke free of tradition, looks as though it has stood there for centuries. 360 E. 55th Street, 404 E. 55th Street and 405 E. 54th Street are known as The Sutton Collection. Located in the heart of Sutton Place, the Sutton Collection is made up of three unique buildings, each building is filled with exceptional architectural details and true New York style that can only be found in the rarest of pre-war properties. At 404 E 55th St resided Noel Coward, this was the playwright’s last Manhattan residence.
Life
Who: Anne Tracy Morgan (July 25, 1873 – January 29, 1952)
Anne Morgan was a philanthropist who provided relief efforts in aid to France during and after WWI and WWII. Morgan was educated privately, traveled frequently and grew up amongst the wealth her father had amassed. She was awarded a medal from the National Institute of Social Science in 1915, the same year she published the story “The American Girl.” In 1932 she became the first American woman appointed a commander of the French Legion of Honor. In 1903 she became part owner of the Villa Trianon near Versailles, France, along with decorator and socialite Elsie De Wolfe (1859-1950) and theatrical/literary agent Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury (1856-1933.) Morgan was instrumental in assisting De Wolfe, her close friend, in pioneering a career in interior decoration. The three women, known as "The Versailles Triumvirate," hosted a salon in France and, in 1903, along with Anne Vanderbilt (1861-1940), helped organize the Colony Club, the first women’s social club in New York City and, later, helped found the exclusive neighborhood of Sutton Place along Manhattan’s East River.

by Elisa Rolle

Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/6228297
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1532901909/?...
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IZ1BU9K/?...

Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut is located at 453 Fairfield Avenue. It was designed by landscape architect Jacob Weidenmann (1829–1893) who also designed Hartford's Bushnell Park. Its first sections were completed in 1866 and the first burial took place on July 17, 1866. Cedar Hill was designed as an American rural cemetery in the tradition of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Address: 453 Fairfield Ave, Hartford, CT 06114, USA (41.72684, -72.6916)
Type: Cemetery (open to public)
Phone: +1 860-956-3311
National Register of Historic Places: 97000333, 1997
Place
The cemetery straddles three towns. It includes the Cedar Hill Cemetery Gateway and Chapel, also known as Northam Memorial Chapel and Gallup Memorial Gateway, which is separately listed on the NRHP. Cedar Hill Cemetery encompasses 270 acres (1.1 km2) and includes several historic buildings, including the Northam Memorial Chapel (built 1882), which was designed by Hartford architect George Keller, and the Superintendent's Cottage (built 1875), which continues to be occupied by Cedar Hill's Superintendent to this day. Open from dawn til dusk 365 days a year, Cedar Hill Cemetery welcomes visitors to walk the grounds and partake in the expansive art, history and natural resources this park-like space has to offer. Cedar Hill has many unique monuments. One of the most recognizable is the 18-foot (5.5 m) tall pink-granite pyramid, and life-sized angel statue, erected in memory of Mark Howard and his wife, Angelina Lee Howard. Mark Howard was president of the National Fire Insurance Company of Hartford and Connecticut's first internal revenue collector. Another example of an unusual grave is that of Cynthia Talcott, age two, which features her likeness in stone. John Pierpont Morgan's family monument was designed by architect George W. Keller. Made of red Scottish granite, the monument was designed to portray Morgan's vision of the Ark of the Covenant. The Porter-Valentine mausoleum features a stained-glass window created by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Notable queer burials at Cedar Hill Cemetery:
• Ethel Collins Dunham (1883-1969) and her life-partner, Martha May Eliot (1891-1978), devoted their lives to the care of children. Dunham focused on premature babies and newborns, becoming chief of child development at the Children's Bureau in 1935. She established national standards for the hospital care of newborn children, and expanded the scope of health care for growing youngsters by monitoring their progress in regular home visits by Children's Bureau staff. Martha invented the cure for Rickets. She tried to go to Harvard, but because women were not admitted to the medical school, went to Johns Hopkins. Eliot went on to become chief of the Division of Child and Maternal Health. She was the only woman to sign the founding document of the World Health Organization, and an influential force in children's health programs worldwide. We do not know where Martha is buried, probably with her family in Massachusetts.
• Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003). Hepburn requested that there be no memorial service.
• Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907), suffragist. Daughter of Lyman Beecher, and half-sister of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), she organized the New England Woman's Suffrage Association in 1868 and the Connecticut Woman's Suffrage Association in 1869. She authored the work "Mother's Letters to a Daughter on Woman's Suffrage." Her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy (180 Main St, Andover, MA 01810).
• Anne Tracy Morgan (1873-1952), daughter of J. P Morgan. Known for her generosity during WWI and WWII. She lived most of her life in France and was awarded many honors.

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Published on January 29, 2017 00:26

January 28, 2017

Ryan Field (born 1970)

Married: January 28, 2014

Ryan Field is the author of over 100 published works of LGBT fiction, the bestselling Virgin Billionaire series, a pg rated hetero romance that was featured on The Home Shopping Network titled, Loving Daylight, and a few more works of full-length fiction with a pen name. He has worked in publishing for twenty years as a writer, editor, and associate editor. His work has been in Lambda Award winning anthologies and he's self-published a few novels with Ryan Field Press. He met Tony in 1992 and being together since then. They share homes in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and Miami Beach, Florida, and have two poodles they consider part of their family. Ryan and Tony like to entertain friends in front of the home fire in their Pennsylvania home, while outside the snow blankets the grounds.
Together since 1992: 23 years.
Ryan Field (born 1970)
Tony (born 1970)
Anniversary: December 6, 1992
Married: January 28, 2014
We do not have many photos taken together because the opportunity never comes up. Since we never thought gay marriage would become a reality on our lifetimes back in 1992, we decided early on to take the night we met as our anniversary like other gay couples we know. And as we wait to see if Pennsylvania will legalize same sex marriage like other states in the US, we will continue to keep that date in December as our official anniversary forever. The marriage certificate is important to us for equal rights and for legal reasons. We have earned it like all other gay couples. But after being together for twenty-one years we have also learned you don't always need a piece of paper to stay together for better or for worse. It is what you feel deep in your heart during the good times and the bad times that matters most. For your 21st anniversary, we went to a local restaurant. Did not think anything unusual. Nice dinner, quiet. No big deal. After the check comes, I see three friends come in. I figure they stopped in for a drink on the way home from a party. Next thing I know a cake with "Marry Me" comes out and then two gold wedding bands. Turns out Tony and the three friends planned the whole thing and I had absolutely no idea at all. And, he planned a wedding in Vermont in Jan. 2014. -Ryan Field

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Published on January 28, 2017 01:06

Reynaldo Hahn (August 9, 1874 – January 28, 1947)

Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie.
Born: August 9, 1874, Caracas, Venezuela
Died: January 28, 1947, Paris, France
Education: Conservatoire de Paris
Buried: Cimetière du Père Lachaise, Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France, Plot: Division 85
Parents: Carlos Hahn, Elena María de Echenagucia
Albums: Néère, La Belle Époque: The Songs of Reynaldo Hahn, more
Operas: Ciboulette, Le marchand de Venise, Mozart

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past). Proust was one of the first European novelists to feature homosexuality openly and at length in À la recherche du temps perdu. Lucien Daudet and Reynaldo Hahn were noted to be his lovers. Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalized French, composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer. In 1894, Hahn met the then-unknown Proust. Their love affair was Proust's first, and Proust later stated, "Everything I have ever done has always been thanks to Reynaldo." Although by 1896 they were no longer lovers, they remained lifelong friends and supporters until Proust's death in 1922. Lucien Daudet was a French writer, the son of Alphonse Daudet. Although a prolific novelist and painter, he was never able to trump his father's greater reputation and is now primarily remembered for his ties to fellow novelist Marcel Proust.
Together from 1894 to 1922: 28 years.
Lucien Daudet (June 11, 1878 – 1946)
Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922)
Reynaldo Hahn (August 9, 1875 – January 28, 1947)

Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?...
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?...

Vast tree-lined burial site with famous names including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison & Maria Callas.
Address: 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, France (48.86139, 2.39332)
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 55 25 82 10
Place
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris (44 hectares or 110 acres), though there are larger cemeteries in the city’s suburbs. Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement and is notable for being the first garden cemetery, as well as the first municipal cemetery. It is also the site of three WWI memorials. The cemetery is on Boulevard de Ménilmontant. The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste on line 2 is next to the main entrance, while the station called Père Lachaise, on both lines 2 and 3, is 500 metres away near a side entrance that has been closed to the public. Many tourists prefer the Gambetta station on line 3, as it allows them to enter near the tomb of Oscar Wilde and then walk downhill to visit the rest of the cemetery. Père Lachaise Cemetery was opened on May 21, 1804. The first person buried there was a five-year-old girl named Adélaïde Paillard de Villeneuve, the daughter of a door bell-boy of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Her grave no longer exists as the plot was a temporary concession. Napoleon, who had been proclaimed Emperor by the Senate three days earlier, had declared during the Consulate that "Every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion.”
Notable queer burials at Père Lachaise:
• Louise Abbéma (1853-1927) was a French painter, sculptor, and designer of the Belle Époque. She first received recognition for her work at age 23 when she painted a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, her lifelong friend and possibly her lover.
• Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) was a French stage and early film actress.
• Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), Nathalie Micas (1824-1889) and Anna Elizabeth Klumpke (1856-1942), buried together.
• Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 1873-1954) was a French novelist nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. She embarked on a relationship with Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf ("Missy"), with whom she sometimes shared the stage.
• Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée Daudet, and writers Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet. Cultivated, “very beautiful, very elegant, a thin and frail young man, with a tender and a somewhat effeminate face”, according to Jean-Yves Tadié, Lucien Daudet lived a fashionable life which made him meet Marcel Proust. They shared at least a friendship (if not a sexual relationship), which was revealed by Jean Lorrain in his chronicle in the Journal. It is for this indiscretion that Proust and Lorrain fought a duel in 1897. Daudet was also friends with Jean Cocteau.
• Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) was an American dancer. Bisexual she had a daughter by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and a son by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. She had relationships with Eleonara Duse and Mercedes de Acosta. She married the Russian bisexual poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior.
• Joseph Fiévée (1767-1839) was a French journalist, novelist, essayist, playwright, civil servant (haut fonctionnaire) and secret agent. Joseph Fiévée married in 1790 (his brother-in-law was Charles Frédéric Perlet), but his wife died giving birth, leaving him one child. At the end of the 1790s, he met the writer Théodore Leclercq who became his life companion, and the two would live and raise Fiévée’s son together. When becoming Préfet, Fiévée and Leclercq moved to the Nièvre department, and their open relationship greatly shocked some locals. The two men were received together in the salons of the Restoration. Both men are buried in the same tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
• Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824) was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who was part of the beginning of the Romantic movement by adding elements of eroticism through his paintings. According to the scholar Diana Knight, over the years Girodet’s homosexuality became widely known.
• Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic, diarist, theatre director, and salon singer.
• Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) was an Anglo-German count, diplomat, writer, and patron of modern art. In his introduction to “Berlin Lights” (2000) Ian Buruma asserted Kessler was homosexual and struggled his whole life to conceal it.
• Boris Yevgen'yevich Kochno (1904-1990), was hired as the personal secretary to Serge Diaghilev, the impresario of the famed Ballets Russes. He served in this capacity until Diaghilev's death in 1929. In addition to his other duties, he also wrote several ballet libretti for the troupe. He died in 1990 in Paris following a fall. He was buried next to Wladimir Augenblick who died in 2001.
• Mathilde (Missy) de Morny (1863-1944), a French noblewoman, artist and transgender figure, she became a lover of several women in Paris, including Liane de Pougy and Colette.
• Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental novel “À la recherche du temps perdu” (In Search of Lost Time), published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927. Also his friend and sometime lover, Reynaldo Hahn is buried here.
• Mlle Raucourt (1756-1815) was a French actress.
• Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise was designed by sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross (1869-1918), who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were transferred to the tomb in 1950.
• Salomon James de Rothschild (1835–1864) was a French banker and socialite. He was the father of Baroness Hélène van Zuylen.
• Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) wrote and published some of his most important work between 1900 and 1914, and then from 1920 to 1921 traveled around the world. He continued to write for the next decade, but when his fortune finally gave out, he made his way to a hotel in Palermo, Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes (Via Roma, 398, 90139 Palermo), where he died of a barbiturate overdose in 1933, aged 56.
• Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American writer of novels, poetry and plays. In 1933, Stein published a kind of memoir of her Paris years, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” written in the voice of Toklas, her life partner. Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early XX century. They are buried together.
• Pavel Tchelitchew (1898-1957), Russian-born surrealist painter. Loved by Edith Sitwell, he then in turn fell in love with Charles Henry Ford and moved with him in New York City.
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. The modernist angel depicted as a relief on the tomb was originally complete with male genitals. They were broken off as obscene and kept as a paperweight by a succession of Père Lachaise Cemetery keepers. Their current whereabouts are unknown. In the summer of 2000, intermedia artist Leon Johnson performed a 40 minute ceremony entitled Re-membering Wilde in which a commissioned silver prosthesis was installed to replace the vandalised genitals.

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Published on January 28, 2017 01:04

Maddalena Campiglia (April 13, 1553 - January 28, 1595)

Born: April 13, 1553, Vicenza
Died: January 28, 1595, Vicenza
Buried: Santa Maria in Araceli, Vicenza
Buried Alongside: Giulia Cisotta

The church of Santa Maria in Araceli is a late-Baroque style church built in the late XVII century in Vicenza according to designs attributed to Guarino Guarini.
Address: Piazza Araceli, 21, 36100 Vicenza VI, Italy (45.55262, 11.54934)
Type: Religious Building (open to public)
Phone: +39 393 482 9000
Place
Documents first take note of a church at the site, dating from 1241. They refer to a church of Santa Maria in the area that stood near a convent. This convent, which in 1277 belonged to the Clarisse Nuns, was called Santa Maria ad Cellam, (referring to the nun's rooms). The suffix was then modified to alla cella, then Arcella and finally to Araceli. Construction of the present church was begun during 1672-1680, a period during which the famous architect Guarino Guarini resided in Vicenza under the patronage of the Theatines. In 1965, designs for the church were found in the Vatican Library. Construction seems to have been guided by Carlo Borella. It was about 60 years after the start of construction, on November 17, 1743, that the church was consecrated. In 1810, during the Napoleonic occupation, the convent was expropriated, and the church became a parish church. The church was replaced by a new parish church, Cristo Re, in 1960. This church ceased being used until restoration in finished in 1990. The main baroque altar (1696), was carved in marble by Tommaso Bezzi . It contains an altarpiece representing the Tiburtine Sybil who portends the coming Virgin and Child to the Roman Emperor Augustus attributed to Pietro Liberi . The altar on the right has a XIII-century painted crucifix, originally from church of San Vito.
Life
Who: Maddalena Campiglia (April 13, 1553 - January 28, 1595)
Maddalena Campiglia was an Italian poetess. She is remembered for having been praised by Torquato Tasso for the composition of the pastoral fable “Flori”, inspired to “Aminta.” Maddalena Campiglia was born in Vicenza from the relationship between Polissena Verlato and Carlo Campiglia. Both nobles and widowers, parents of two sons, the two regularized their union only in 1565. In the course of her studies, the young Campiglia showed special interest in literature, philosophy and music. Critical to its formation also turned the attendance of the cultural society of the XVI century which met in the province of Vicenza at the house owned by her cousin Elena, married the Marquis Guido Sforza Gonzaga. There she met Curzio Gonzaga - Marquis of Palazzolo, poet and diplomat, a friend of writers and artists - custodian of the trust of the poet to the point to be designated in her will as editor of her writings. Presumably, here, she met Dionisio da Colzè, her husband from 1576 to 1580, when she separated and began to live alone. Theirs was - for imposition of Campiglia - a white wedding. According to the writer, virginity was to be experienced not as a constraint but as an effective means of obtaining the women independence from the male gender. As the embodiment par excellence of this principle, she shows the Virgin Mary who was devoted to spontaneous chastity and for the greatness of this choice had been chosen by God. The most recognized work of Campiglia was “Flori,” a boscareccia tale inspired by “Aminta” of Torquato Tasso that earned her the congratulations of the poet himself. Flori is a virgin nymph dedicated to the cult of Diana, who, heartbroken by the death of her beloved girlfriend Amaranta, is destined to fall in love with the first man she meets. Albeit in love with the pastor whom she meets, the nymph accepts only a chaste marriage. The woman loved by Flori, Calisa, whose name is hidden behind that of Isabella Pallavicini Lupi, marquise of Soragna, protector of Maddalena and to whom “Flori” is dedicated, as well as several other sonnets. Maddalena Campiglia died in Vicenza following a long illness that deprived her of sight. In recent years, the poet approached the monastic environments and expressed the unusual will, which was respected, to be buried in the same tomb of the abbess Giulia Cisotta, at the church of Santa Maria in Araceli in Vicenza.

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Published on January 28, 2017 00:57

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