Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns

by David Margolick

New England’s finest private schools were rife with prejudice. That included not just his own, where the religious bias was institutionalized—Andover’s founding document provided that “Protestants only shall ever be concerned in the TRUST or Instruction of this Academy”—but, whether by official proscription or unspoken tradition, many other comparably prestigious schools. “It is perfectly true that it will be hard for you to get a place in several of the schools which I regard most highly, including Hotchkiss, Deerfield, St. Paul’s, Milton, and Choate,” Fuess conceded. He suggested, essentially, that Burns stick to his own kind. “The public schools, however, particularly in Boston and vicinity, should be open to you if you care to move in that direction,” he wrote. “Beyond that, of course, there lies the college and the university, in which the religious