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Charles Warren Stoddard

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Charles Warren Stoddard
Born August 7, 1843
Rochester, New York, U.S.
Died April 23, 1909 (aged 65)
Monterey, California, U.S.
Resting place San Carlos Cemetery, Monterey, California, U.S.[1]
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Charles Warren Stoddard (August 7, 1843 – April 23, 1909) was an American author and editor best known for his travel books about Polynesian life.

Biography

Charles Warren Stoddard was born in Rochester, New York on August 7, 1843. He was descended in a direct line from Anthony Stoddard of England, who settled at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1639.

While he was still a child, he moved with his parents to New York City. In 1855, the family migrated to San Francisco, California when his father found a job at a mercantile firm. Stoddard was 11 and was immediately smitten with the city and, as he recalled, its "natural tendency to overdress, to over-decorate, to overdo almost everything".[2] In 1857, he joined his ill brother Ned on a restorative trip to the East Coast, where they stayed at their grandfather's farm in western New York.[3] He returned to San Francisco to rejoin his family by 1859.

Stoddard began writing verses at a young age amid the growing literary climate of California. His first published work saw print in The Golden Era for September 1862 under the pseudonym "Pip Pepperpod". He later recalled how he clandestinely slipped his contribution into the Era’s mailbox without anyone knowing: "No member of my family suspected that I was so bold as to dream of entering the circle of the elect who wrote regularly every week for the chief literary organ west of the Rocky Mountains".[4] His writings were well received and were later published as Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard. Poor health compelled him to give up his plans for a college education. He tried a career on the stage without success.

Polynesia

In 1864, Stoddard visited the South Sea Islands where he wrote South-Sea Idyls, a series of letters he sent to a friend. This friend had them published in book form in 1873. "They are," wrote William Dean Howells, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean,"[5] but are also exceedingly homoerotic.[6] Stoddard made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and wrote his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights.

Stoddard visited Molokai several times and became well acquainted with Father Damien–a Catholic saint since 2009–who ministered to the lepers there. Stoddard's The Lepers of Molokai, according to Robert Louis Stevenson, did much to establish Father Damien's position in public esteem. In 1867, soon after his first visit to the South Sea Islands, Stoddard was received into the Catholic Church. He told the story of his conversion in a small book, A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted, of which he said: "Here you have my inner life all laid bare."

Friends

In 1867, Stoddard converted to Catholicism.[7] In 1869, he became good friends with travel writer Theresa Yelverton.[8]

In 1873, he started on a long tour as special correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. His roving commission carried no restrictions of any kind. For five years, he traveled through Europe and went as far east as Palestine and Egypt. He sent considerable material to his newspaper, much of which it never printed, though some of it was among his best work. Around 1880, Stoddard served co-editor of the Overland Monthly with Bret Harte and Ina Coolbrith.

In 1891, Stoddard spent the summer aboard the yacht "Ramona" owned by Bohemian Club darling Harry Gillig and his wife, heiress Aimee Crocker, sailing the Atlantic Coast. Other guests of the pleasure boat were painter Theodore Wores, playwrights Augustus Thomas and Clay Greene, editor Jerome Hart, and actor Henry Woodruff.

Notre Dame

In 1885, having decided to settle down, he accepted the position of chair of the English literature department at the University of Notre Dame. He resigned, officially citing malaria. According to literary historian Roger Austen has written that the real reason behind Stoddard's decision was the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality.[9] John W. Crowley[10] maintains that Stoddard clashed with colleagues over his attentions to the students.[11]

The same reasons, whether limited to ill-health or also related to behavioral matters, caused him to resign a corresponding position that he held at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. from 1889 to 1902. In a short time, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, intending to devote himself exclusively to literary work. A serious and almost fatal illness interfered with his plans.[12] He published his Exits and Entrances, a book of essays and sketches which he called his favorite work, probably because it told of his friendship with Stevenson and of other literary acquaintances.

In April 1903, he returned to San Francisco and was the guest of honor at a welcome-home party at the Bohemian Club with Henry James and Enrico Caruso in attendance. He then settled in Monterey, California, with a hope of recovering his health, although he traveled within California and was in San Francisco during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.[13]

He stayed on in Monterey, where he was diagnosed with heart disease, until his death from a heart attack on April 23, 1909.[9]

Private life

Stoddard was homosexual.[11] He praised South Sea societies' receptiveness to homosexual liaisons and lived in relationships with men.

From San Francisco, late in 1866, Stoddard sent his newly published Poems to Herman Melville, along with news that in Hawaii he had found no traces of Melville. Having written even more fervently to Walt Whitman, Stoddard had been excited by Typee, finding the Kory-Kory character so stimulating that he wrote a story celebrating the sort of male friendships to which Melville had more than once alluded. From the poems Stoddard sent, Melville may have sensed no homosexual undercurrent, and the extant draft of his reply in January 1867 is noncommittal.

Francis Millet, a well-regarded American Academic Classicist artist, had a studio in Rome in the early 1870s and Venice in the mid-1870s, where he lived with Stoddard. Author Jonathan Ned Katz presents letters from Millet to Stoddard that suggest they had a romantic and intimate affair while living a bohemian life together.[14] Amy Sueyoshi additionally traces Stoddard's affair with Yone Noguchi through their passionate correspondence to one another.[15]

In the film Leonie, Stoddard (portrayed by Patrick Weathers) is shown being flirtatious with the character Yone Noguchi.[16]

Works

He said of his only novel, For the Pleasure of His Company, "Here you have my Confessions." So strictly biographical are most of his writings that Stoddard hoped by supplying a few missing links to enable the reader to trace out the whole story of his life.

Besides the books already mentioned, he wrote:

  • South Sea Idylls (1873)
  • Summer Cruising in the South Seas (1874)
  • Marshallah, a Flight into Egypt (1885);
  • A Trip to Hawaii (1885)
  • In the Footprints of the Padres (1902)
  • Cruising among the Caribbees (1893)
  • Hawaiian Life (1894)
  • Saint Anthony, The Wonder-Worker of Padua (1896)
  • A Cruise under the Crescent (1898)
  • Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska (1899)
  • Father Damien, a Sketch (1903)
  • For the Pleasure of His Company (1903)
  • With Staff and Scrip (1904)
  • Hither and Yon
  • The Confessions of a Reformed Poet (1907)
  • The Dream Lady (1907)

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

An American author, born 7 August, 1843, at Rochester, N. Y.; died 23 April, 1909, at Monterey, California. He was descended in a direct line from Anthony Stoddard of England, who settled at Boston, Mass., in 1639. While he was still a child his parents moved to New York City, where they lived till 1855, when they migrated to San Francisco, California. In 1857 he returned alone to New York, lived with his grandparents for two years, and then rejoined his family in San Francisco. In a short time he began writing verses, which he sent anonymously to a local newspaper. They met with great success and were later published with the modest title "Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard". Poor health compelled him to give up his plans for a college education. He tried the stage, but soon realized that such a life was not his calling. In 1864 he visited the South Sea Islands and from there wrote his "Idyls" - letters which he sent to a friend who had them published in book form. "They are," as Mr. Howells says, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean." He made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and gave his impressions in "Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes" and "The Island of Tranquil Delights". Several times he visited Molokai, and became well acquainted with Father Damien, the Apostle to the Lepers, and wrote his interesting little book, "The Lepers of Molokai", which, with Stevenson's famous letter, did much to establish Father Damien's true position in public esteem. In 1867, soon after his first visit to the South Sea Islands, he was received into the Catholic Church, for which he had a most tender devotion. The story of his conversion he has told in a small book interestingly written: "A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted". Of this book he has said: "Here you have my inner life all laid bare." To this change in his religious belief are due in great measure those genial optimistic qualities that endeared him to all who knew him.

In 1873 he started on a long tour as special correspondent of the "San Francisco Chronicle". His commission was a roving one, without restrictions of any kind. He was absent for five years, during which he travelled over Europe and went as far east as Palestine and Egypt. He sent considerable matter to his newspaper, much of which was never reprinted, though some of it was among his best work. In 1885, having decided to settle down, he accepted the chair of English literature in the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; but owing to ill-health he soon resigned. The same reason caused him to resign a corresponding position which he held in the Catholic University, Washington, D. C., from 1889 to 1902. In a short time he moved to Cambridge, Mass., intending to devote himself exclusively to literary work. A serious and almost fatal illness interfered with his plans, yet he was not idle. He put forth his "Exits and Entrances", a book of essays and sketches which he called his favourite work, probably because it told of his intimate friend Stevenson and of others among his host of literary acquaintances. At this time he also wrote his only novel, "For the Pleasure of His Company", of which he said, "Here you have my Confessions." So strictly biographical are most of his writings that Stoddard hoped by supplying a few missing links to enable the reader to trace out the whole story of his life. In 1905 he returned to California and settled in Monterey with a hope of recovering his health. He lingered on till 1909, when he died in his sixty-sixth year. To superficial observers he was a man of contradictions. He was essentially Bohemian, but of the higher type, a man who could not resist the call of the far-away land, his home, as he himself said, being always under his hat. And yet he was a mystic and a recluse even in his travels. "Imaginative and impressionable", two epithets which he applied to his South Sea friends, are particularly appropriate to Stoddard himself.

That charm of his traits which may be described as "sweetness, peacefulness, tenderness, gentleness" he imparted to his writings. Noted English authors have given the highest praise to some of his work, and have taken to task the American public for their lack of appreciation of him. Besides the books already mentioned he wrote: "Summer Cruising in the south Seas" (1874); "Marshallah, a Flight into Egypt" (1885); "A Trip to Hawaii" (1885); "In the Footprints of the Padres" (1892); "Hawaiian Life" (1894); "The Wonder Worker of Padua" (1896); "A Cruise under the Crescent" (1898); "Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska" (1899); "Father Damien, a Sketch" (1903); "With Staff and Scrip" (1904); "Hither and Yon"; "The Confessions of a Reformed Poet" (1907); "The Dream Lady" (1907).

JAMES in California Classics Series (1909); Nat. Mag. (Aug., 1911); Ave Maria (June, 1909); Overland Monthly (Jan., June, 1909).

References

  1. Back to citation cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19090427.2.30
  2. Back to citation Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 38. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  3. Back to citation Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 39. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  4. Back to citation Tarnoff, Ben. The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 40. ISBN 978-1-59420-473-9
  5. Back to citation Lyons, Paul (2006). American Pacificism: Oceania in the U.S. Imagination. New York: Routledge. p. 122. ISBN 9781134264155. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
  6. Back to citation Austen, Roger, Stoddard's Little Tricks in South Sea Idyls in Kellogg, Stuart (ed.) Literary Visions of Homosexuality, The Haworth Press, New York 1983, ISBN 0-86656-183-8, p74.
  7. Back to citation Tarnoff, Benjamin (2014). The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature. Penguin Books. p. 143. ISBN 9781594204739.
  8. Back to citation Chloë Schama, Wild Romance: A Victorian Story (New York: Walker & Company), 151-153
  9. Back to citation occurrence 9.0 Back to citation occurrence 9.1 Austen, Roger; Crowley, John W. (1995). Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard. Univ of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-0870239809.
  10. Back to citation GLBTQ >>Contributor Biography: John W. Crowley
  11. Back to citation occurrence 11.0 Back to citation occurrence 11.1 "GLBTQ >> literature >> Stoddard, Charles Warren by John W. Crowley". Archived from the original on February 7, 2015. Retrieved December 23, 2014.
  12. Back to citation Flaherty, Matthew. "Charles Warren Stoddard." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 19 Apr. 2023
  13. Back to citation "Bay Area Reporter:: Art Article.php". The Bay Area Reporter / B.A.R. Inc.
  14. Back to citation Katz, Jonathan Ned (2001), Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  15. Back to citation Sueyoshi, Amy (2012), Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
  16. Back to citation "Leonie (2010)" – via www.imdb.com.

Bibliography

  • Austen, Roger, Stoddard's Little Tricks in South Sea Idyls in Kellogg, Stuart (ed.) Literary Visions of Homosexuality, The Haworth Press, New York 1983, ISBN 0-86656-183-8
  • Austen, Roger, Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard, The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst 1995, ISBN 978-0870239809
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