Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/373

 Coup. Ah, you young, hot, lusty thief I Let me muzzle you! (Kisses him.) Sirrah, let me muzzle you!

Fash. Pshaw! The old lecher …!

Coup. Well, sirrah—be at my lodgings in half an Hour, and I'll see what may be done. We'll sign and seal and eat a pullet together; and when I have given thee some farther instructions, thou shalt hoist sail and be gone. (Kisses him.) T'other buss!—and so—adieu!

Fash. Um! Pshaw!

Coup. Ah, you young—warm—dog! What a delicious night the bride will have with you! (Exit.)

As noted, Smollett's "Roderick Random" contains two episodes that show acquaintance with the prevalence of uranianism in England, in his day. In Chapter XXIV, an effeminate young commander, Captain Whiffle, comes aboard ship, presently followed by the Captain's equally effeminate friend, Surgeon Simper. With Simper, the Captain is accused of "maintaining a correspondence not fit to be named." Another passage is the long and audacious narrative in Chapter LI,where the homosexual Earl Strutwell (one of the authour's political caricatures) after hugging and kissing the good-looking young hero, presented to him by a pimp, tries to seduce Roderick by way of Petronius; entering upon a long panegyric of uranianism as being the most healthful and fashionable kind of sexual intercourse.

We are likely to repel the idea that the delightful cynic Horace Walpole could experience either heterosexual or homosexual affection. No woman ever more than stirred the heart of Horace Walpole. He had only intellectual and aesthetic interest in the sex. But homosexualism was in his blood. The quality of his friendship with Conway did not always remain passionless. In the Letters, one now and then comes on a passage warm enough to show that Walpole