Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/255

 circumstances that precluded ideas of suicide) was murdered by the Duke, because Sellis had threatened the latter with exposure of his intimacy with Neale. The Duke got out of the affair with great difficulty. He became presently King of Hanover, and was the center of a German court plentiful in homosexual interests. Within the present generation of English royalty,

another princely personage (since deceased) was supposed to be among an aristocratic clique implicated in a famous London homosexual esclandre. It is, in fact, believed that this affair was hushed up "so expeditiously, because it came so near to the throne; certain other high-born participants gaining time to "leave their country for their country's good".

The wide prevalence of Uranian relationships in British "high society" to-day is too well-attested, too familiar the world around by more or less noted scandals and malodourous legal processes, to require extensive reference here. Several phases of it must be cited in other sections of this study, in appropriate connections. Mayfair's sensational divorce-proceedings have added evidence to the aggregate. Of the similisexual tastes of Englishmen of "our finest social circles" at home, a tacit evidence is their persistent residence abroad in countries where they can feel safer from suspicion and from blackmailing scandals. One eminent personage in British political life, who once reached the highest honours in a career that has appeared to be taken up or thrown by with curious capriciousness or hesitancy, is a constant absentee in his beautiful home in Southern Europe, whence only gentle rumours of his racial homosexuality reach his birth-land.

In fact, every period of social history has an interminable catalogue of homosexuals of quality. We have already encountered them in course of