A leading figure
in late 19th and early 20th century Britain, Carpenter was instrumental
in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labor Party. A poet and
writer, he was a close friend of Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore,
corresponding with many famous figures such as Annie Bessant, Isadore
Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, James Keir Hardie,
J.K. Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E.D. Morel, William Morris,
E.R. Pease, John Ruskin and Olive Schrener. In this writers humble
opinion, along with Walt Whitman, this man’s date of birth should be a
recognized holiday in the LGBT community.
As a philosopher Carpenter may have been the original Radical Faerie. He is particularly known for his publication of Civilization, its Cause and Cure in
which he proposes that civilization is a form of disease that human
societies pass through. Civilizations, he says, rarely last more than a
thousand years before collapsing, and no society has ever passed through
civilization successfully. His 'cure' is a closer association with the
land and greater development of our inner nature. Although derived from
his experience of Hindu mysticism, and referred to as 'mystical
socialism', his thoughts parallel those of several writers in the field
of psychology and sociology at the start of the twentieth century, such
as Boris Sidis, Sigmund Freud, and Wilfred Trotter who all recognized
that society puts ever increasing pressure on the individual, which can
result in mental and physical illnesses such as neurosis, and the
particular nervousness which was then described as neurasthenia.
A strong advocate
of sexual freedom, living in a Gay community near Sheffield, he had a
profound influence on both D H Lawrence and E M Forster. He was also the
first person to introduce the wearing of sandals into Britain.
In the 1880s
Carpenter developed an intellectual passion for Hindu mysticism and
Indian philosophy. During this period, Carpenter received a pair of
sandals from a friend in India. "I soon found the joy of wearing
them," Carpenter wrote. "And after a little time I set about making
them."This was the first successful introduction of sandals to Britain.
In 1890 he traveled to Ceylon and India to spend time with the Hindu
teacher called Gnani, who he describes his work "Adam's Peak to
Elephanta". The experience had a profound effect on his social and
political thought. Carpenter began to believe that Socialism should not
only concern itself with man's outward economic conditions, but also
affect a profound change in human consciousness. In this new stage of
society Carpenter argued that mankind would return to a primordial state
of simple joy:
"The meaning of
the old religions will come back to him. On the high tops once more
gathering he will celebrate with naked dances the glory of the human
form and the great processions of the stars, or greet the bright horn of
the young moon.” Edward Carpenter (1889), Civilization: Its Cause and Cure.
This brand of
"Mystical socialism" inspired him to begin a number of campaigns against
air pollution, promoting vegetarianism and opposing vivisection.
On his return
from India in 1891, he met George Merrill, a working class man also from
Sheffield, and the two men struck up a strong relationship, eventually
moving in together as lovers in 1898. Merrill had been raised in the
slums of Sheffield and had no formal education. Two men of different
classes living together as a couple was almost unheard of in England in
the 1890s, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about
homosexuality generated by the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895 and the
Criminal Law Amendment Bill passed a decade earlier "outlawing all forms
of male homosexual contact". But their relationship endured and they
remained partners for the rest of their lives. The love of the two men,
not only defied Victorian sexual mores but also the highly stratified
British class system. Their partnership in many ways reflected
Carpenter's cherished conviction that homosexual love had the power to
subvert class boundaries. It was his belief that at sometime in the
future homosexual people would be the cause of radical social change in
the social conditions of man. Carpenter remarks in his work "The Intermediate Sex",
"Eros is a great
leveler. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere
else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste,
and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society.
It is noticeable how often Uranians of good position and breeding are
drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very
permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly
acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs
and political tendencies". p.114-115
(Note: The term "Uranian", referring to a passage from Plato's Symposium, was often used at the time to describe someone who would be termed "homosexual" or "gay" today.)
The 1890s saw
Carpenter produce his finest political writing in a concerted effort to
campaign against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. He
strongly believed that homosexuality was a natural orientation for
people of a third sex. His 1908 book on the subject, The Intermediate
Sex, would become a foundational text of the LGBT movements of the 20th
century. It can only speculated why Carpenter felt compelled to embark
on such an unpopular and even dangerous subject in such hostile times,
but one theory is that Carpenter's moral courage was ignited by the
death of the gay scholar and middle-class radical John Addington
Symonds. In the 1880s Symonds had composed a number of works in defense
of homosexuality, which were distributed among a small group of people,
including Carpenter. On Symonds' death in 1893, Carpenter perhaps saw
the political mantle passing to him and within a couple of years made
his first attempt to write on the subject. While engaged in this
campaign Carpenter developed a keen interest in progressive education,
especially providing information to young people on the topic of sexual
education, and was a good friend of John Haden Badley, the social
reformer and educationalist and would regularly visit BedalesSchool when
his nephew Alfred Francis Blakeney was a student there.
Sexual education
for Carpenter also meant forwarding a clear analysis of the ways in
which sex and gender were used to oppress women, contained in
Carpenter's radical work "Love's Coming-of-Age". In it he argued that a
just and equal society must promote the sexual and economic freedom of
women. The main crux of his analysis centered on the negative affects of
the institution of marriage. He regarded marriage in England as both
enforced celibacy and a form of prostitution. He did not believe women
would truly be free until a socialist society was established. In
contrast to many of his contemporaries, however, this led him to
conclude that all oppressed workers should support women's emancipation,
rather than to subordinate women's rights to male worker's rights. He
remarked
"...there is no
solution except the freedom of woman-which means, of course, the freedom
of the masses of the people, men and women, and the ceasing altogether
of economic slavery. There is no solution which will not include the
redemption of the terms free women and free love to their true and
rightful significance. Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the
sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute
herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman"
He continued to
work in the early part of the 20th century composing works on the
"Homogenic question". The publication in 1908 of his groundbreaking
anthology of poems, Iolaus - Anthology Of Friendship was a huge
underground success, leading to a more advanced knowledge of
homoerotic culture. In April 1914, Carpenter and his friend Laurence
Houseman founded the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology.
Some of the topics addressed in lecture and publication by the society
included: the promotion of the scientific study of sex; a more rational
attitude towards sexual conduct and problems and questions connected
with sexual psychology (from medical, juridical, and sociological
aspects), birth control, abortion, sterilization, venereal diseases, and
all aspects of prostitution. At this time, he also lectured to the
Independent Labor Party and to the Fellowship of the New Life, from
which the Fabian Society later grew.
In May 1928
Carpenter suffered a paralytic stroke rendering him almost helpless. He
lived another 13 months before he died on a perfect summer afternoon,
Friday June 28, 1929. On December 30, 1910 Carpenter had written:
"I should like
these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the
earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what
is going on, I shall not be able to communicate..."
Unfortunately the
existence of his request was not discovered until several days after
his burial. The closing words form the epitaph engraved on his
tombstone:
"Do not think too
much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it, but
send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped —
to reach it. For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his
onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that
kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven."
He was interred
in Mount Cemetery at Guildford in Surrey. At the time of his death,
Carpenter was largely forgotten, but his books were stocked in many
libraries' "restricted to adults" sections and proved inspirational to
Gay people searching for solace. One such man was the Gay Rights
activist Harry Hay. He was so inspired by the work of Carpenter and his
prophecy of the coming together of homosexuals to fight for their rights
that he decided to put the words into action by founding the Mattachine
Society which started advancing homosexual rights in America.
Father John M. McNeill
