The Prince's Boy by Paul Bailey

New York: Bloomsbury, 2014

Written in form of a memoir in 1967, The Prince's Boy tells the story of Dinu Grigorescu's life of the past forty years in Bucharest, Paris and London.

Razvan Popescu, a Romanian peasant boy of 11 whose father is deceased and whose mother is struggling with many children, is adopted away from his difficult home situation by a Romanian prince around the turn of the 20th century. The prince hires the best tutors who educate Razvan in literature and the arts. When they relocate to Paris, this boy of peasant ancestry begins to operate in society and is known as the prince's boy. After the prince’s death, Razvan inherits an apartment but is forced to provide sexual favors for cash.

In 1927, Dinu Grigorescu is sent to Paris by his wealthy father to become a great author or poet—to experience la vie de Boheme, but mainly to help him move on from his mother’s death 5 years earlier. While there, he is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d'Alsace, a notorious establishment where men of a certain class can procure sexual services that are a bit more out of the ordinary. It is here that Dinu meets Honore (Razvan), who supplies these services. Immediately becoming something much more than sex worker and client, and feeling a strong connection through their mutual Romanian ancestry, they fall in love.

Covering the forty years after their initial meeting, Dinu relays the internal struggle to form a permanent relationship with Razvan against the backdrop of the beginnings of obvious anti-semitism in Romania, Romania's alliance with the Nazis, and all of the social changes that come with the horrors of World War II. As an aesthete, Dinu's life is more influenced by literature and the arts. The work of Marcel Proust plays an important role in his life and how he sees the world. His close relationship with his own mother meant he connected easily to Marcel's relationship with his. As well, the work of Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu is a major influence.

Told in very plain language, this is a melancholy work. Dinu describes himself as "Romanian by birth, French by choice, and English by accident."  He really seems to be a man out of time and place, a man heartbroken by the past and unable to move into the future.

Hendrik Andersen and John Briggs-Potter in Florence by Andreas Andersen

Hendrik Andersen and John Briggs-Potter in Florence (1894)
Andreas Andersen (1869-1902)
Museo Hendrik Christian Andersen

Grievous by H. S. Cross

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Taking place in 1931 at St. Stephen's Academy, five years after the events of Cross' 2015 novel, Wilberforce, Grievous is a sweeping novel with complex inter-related storylines. The central characters are Grieves, a Housemaster who finds his responsibility for disciplining students in opposition to his pacifist inclinations and Riding, a creative student who struggles more generally after the loss of his father.

As with Wilberforce, Cross pays homage to the classic boarding school novels and authors. Riding, who writes fantastic stories which, with the help of other students are acted out in secret, provides a connection to the lives of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Interestingly, while Wilberforce follows the classic form of focusing on games, they are only mentioned in passing in Grievous. The action here is focused more on choir, creative writing and acting.

A central theme of the novel is illness and death. Many characters have experienced the death of a parent or spouse and frankly none of them handle it well. Neither the students, nor the adults seem to be able to talk about their feelings, causing any number of misunderstandings and errors in judgement. Grieves' troubled personal life manifests in his impossible relationship with a married woman who is now ill and traveling with her daughter throughout Europe and America to find a cure.

Riding and Grieves are heavily involved in each others lives but this manifests itself almost exclusively in their relationships with others. Over the summer while Cordelia is traveling with her mother to find a cure, she is engaged in a one way correspondence with Riding about her days. As well, Riding's mother, a nurse, is corresponding with Grieves who is trying to help the woman he loves find a cure.

New York : Fox Books, 2008

Some have described this novel as less claustrophobic than Wilberforce since significant parts of the action take place outside the walls of St. Stephens. While there is the experience of life outside the school, the weight of life's challenges seem to follow the characters wherever they go. There's a certain melancholy and longing for connection that permeates the book in both the adult and adolescent characters. This creation of setting based on emotions or feelings as opposed to lengthy description of locations is one of the strongest elements of the novel.

Grievous is described as Cross' second novel, but it has its roots in a novel called Riding, published by Cross in 2008. Riding was issued in two volumes amounting to over 1000 pages. Following the same structure, Grievous has been tightened up and the writing generally improved. In Riding the bones are certainly there, while 10 years hence, Grievous is a much stronger work.  In a July 28, 2008 interview with Amande Green, Cross spoke about Riding and described her next work at the time as a prequel called Wilberforce.

Sunburst by Claude Buck

Sunburst (1913)

Claude Buck (American, 1890-1974)

Gouache, watercolor, pencil, pen and colored ink on paper

23.2 x 14.9 cm

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Self-portrait by Claude Buck

Self-portrait (1917)

Claude Buck (American, 1890-1974)

charcoal and crayon on paper mounted on paperboard

19.8 x 12.7 cm

Smithsonian Museum of American Art

The Master by Colm Toibin

New York : Scribner, 2004

Henry James is known as the gay writer that never wrote anything gay. Certainly in recent decades there have been queer readings of his work, but overall his intent was to avoid gay stories or to obscure them so totally that they go unnoticed. Colm Toibin has brilliantly conveyed aspects of James' life, highlighting his fear of being found out and the struggle of not being able to live as ones true self. Myriad examples of what can happen when one does live authentically present themselves and remind James that it's not safe.

Opening in January 1895 with the premier of Guy Domville, Henry James' first play, The Master proceeds through the final five years of the nineteenth century. James is 52 at the start of the novel and the events of the ensuing five years recall key moments in his life—particularly the deaths of his parents, his sister and his close friend, the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson. These events highlight his struggle to maintain relationships throughout his life.

Writing short stories and novels, James has preferred to work in solitude, resulting in challenges in  relationships with both family and friends. His primary relationship is to his work so he avoids the opening of his play by attending another theater performance, an Oscar Wilde play (likely An Ideal Husband). After Guy Domville closes as a failure the night that it opens, The Importance of Being Earnest opens in its place, giving Wilde two plays in production at the same time.

Within a few months, Wilde's star has fallen and two friends (Jonathan Sturgess and Edmond Gosse) begin sharing weekly updates with James regarding the ensuing trial for gross indecency. James' reaction makes it clear that he believes it's too dangerous to live honestly and the trial only confirms his commitment to his writing and avoidance of romantic attachments.

References to more accepting countries in Europe are used to highlight the danger of being gay in England at this time. Rumors of Wilde's fleeing to France before he was ultimately imprisoned made sense given the permissive laws there. After Wilde's imprisonment, James continued to converse with Edmond Gosse and the subject of expatriate John Addington Symonds entered the conversation. Symnonds had lived in Italy because of its more accepting culture and had privately published A Problem of Greek Ethics, a defense of homosexuality and sent copies to friends in England who were horrified. Although not expressly stated, there is an implication that James was one of the recipients.

Henry James and Hendrik Anderson
c.1907

James walked a tightrope when it came to managing relationships in society. He needed the interaction, since that's where many of his storylines were borne, but how do you maintain relationships with men without inciting gossip, such as happened regarding his relationship to the young sculptor, Hendrik Christian Anderson, or with women without creating an expectation of something more. As Baroness von Rabe notes late in the novel,

“I remember you when you were young and all the ladies followed you, nay fought with each other to go riding with you. That Mrs. Sumner and young Miss Boott and young Miss Lowe. All the young ladies, and others not so young. We all liked you, and I suppose you liked us as well, but were too busy gathering material to like anyone too much. You were charming, of course, but you were like a young banker collecting our savings. Or a priest listening to our sins.” (p.265)

In order to survive, James had to keep his interior feelings quite separate from his outward interactions. When he occasionally softens that division, society provides a warning encouraging that wall to remain in place. When he's asked by his niece why Isabel returns to Osmond at the end of Portrait of a Lady, he says "It is easier to renounce bravery rather than to be brave over and over.” (p.325)

Bathing by Duncan Grant

Bathing (1911)
Duncan Grant (Scottish, 1885-1978)
Oil on canvas
228 x 306 cm.
The Tate