Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/425

 a higher vocal timbre; that the deeper the female voice, the more to be suspected is intersexualism.

On the stage occur types of the masculine-feminine; presumptive or known Uraniads. Sometimes theatrical life offers a type of woman, who in spite of a normally sexual past seems more a man than many men, in her force of intellect, in her dismissal to the secondary plane most sentimental feminine interests. Such is Sarah Bernhardt; who has, with advancing years identified herself more and more with male roles, masculinizing her life, and uniting in her many-sided personality aspects of the intellectual and the physical of two sexes. In fact, this great actress's real sexual history is considerably uraniad; more than is well-known. A strongly uraniadistic actress (psychically) was the noted American tragedian, Charlotte Cushman. Like Sarah Bernhardt she was acceptable in male roles; at her best only in the severer and almost unfeminine characters, her bodily personality being rather virile than female. The French and Italian theatrical stage has a large contingent of uraniads of mark. One distinguished actress of Italy; also a South-Italian dramatic contralto; also a distinguished vocal instructress; a great German dramatic teacher; three female painters; a Scandinavian sculptress—all recur to the writer of these pages as being identified more or less as Uraniads. A noted female sculptor who died about a decade ago in Rome, was not only of masculine nature and physique, but carried far enough her sexual indifference to- everything male to embarrass occasionally her friends. Sometimes she admitted visitors to her atelier while working from nude male models. On one such occasions her calmness was amusing. A distinguished sculptor, a man, was present, though the model was nude. The model, a robust young Trastevere lad of some fourteen years, became sexually excited. Somehow timid of a change of pose or expecting his agitation to subside, he remained conspicuously—priapian. Miss X—, without interrupting her chat,