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9. Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio: An Early American Romance
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Chapter 9 Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio An Early American Romance Caleb Crain On 1 August 1786, a Princeton undergraduate wrote of his twenty-sevenyear -old friend, “after recitation [I] went to Leander—he gave me a hair ribbon and I promised to sleep with him to night” (Lorenzo 58). More than two centuries later, it is hard to read this sort of diary entry without either exaggerating or pooh-poohing its hint of sex. In the late eighteenth century, male friends often shared a bed, and many gentlemen were fastidious about their personal appearance. However, the entry does show a man flattering a boy’s vanity, in a relationship where the two are easy and familiar with each other’s bodies. Gay love as we know it is modern, and as Thoreau wrote, “the past cannot be presented” (155). However, close examination in context of the language men used in early America to describe and convey their feelings may reduce the anachronism of our understanding. Such an examination may also cast light on the peculiar ambition of classic American literature to represent the nation’s spirit as male-male love, according to a metaphoric logic that in D. H. Lawrence’s opinion climaxed with the Whitmanian equation of “The last merging. The last Democracy. The last love. The love of comrades” (178). Two diaries I have examined, of John Fishbourne Mifflin (1759–1813) and James Gibson (1769–1856), offer a uniquely detailed and extensive chronicle of passion between men in early America. Under the cognomens of Leander and Lorenzo, Mifflin and Gibson wrote for each other and about each other. Two volumes (546 pages) of Mifflin’s diary survive, and one volume (100 pages) of Gibson’s. Read in conjunction 217 Reprinted from Early American Literature, vol. 33. A more detailed version of this essay appears in American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation by Caleb Crain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). with the family correspondence of a third young man, Isaac Norris III (known as Castalio), these diaries tell a story of affection between American men at a crucial moment: at the acme of the culture of sentiment and sensibility, when individuals first considered following the unruly impulse of sympathy as far as it would go. The men’s writings also sensitively register the period’s changing ideal of literary beauty: the diaries begin as marks of refinement, like fancy ribbons gentlemen might add to their coiffures , but they gradually break into gestures—exposures of the self that attempt to let out something unexpected. Where the Second Bank of the United States now stands, on Chestnut Street between Fourth and Fifth streets in Philadelphia, one block east of Independence Hall, the Norris family once grew a famously elegant garden . Charles Norris had built his house on the western edge of the city, but Philadelphia grew outward to meet the Norrises: by the 1780s, their home enviably combined rural proportions with urban location. The Quaker matron Ann Warder recorded in her diary on 18 October 1786 that the Norrises “have a noble house and beautiful garden, which are rare in this city” (Cadbury 54). The Norris garden was a mix of beauty and science typical of the eighteenth century. They, or the Swiss gardener they employed for twenty-five years, raised pineapples in their hothouse and medicinal herbs in their herbarium. Just outside the window of the back parlor, a palisade of scarlet honeysuckle, sweetbriar, and roses enclosed a terrace shaded by catalpas . Further down grew willows, the first trees of the species ever brought to the region, a gift from Benjamin Franklin. To reach the garden proper, one descended a flight of stone steps into a neoclassical design of “square parterres and beds, regularly intersected by graveled and grass walks and alleys.” Espaliers of fine grapes led to a rustic-style cottage that lodged one of the women whom the Norrises were always too tactful to call a servant. The garden was a kind of jewel. The balance and order of its design, the attention to previously unknown species, and the fastidious upkeep of the grounds spoke of the Norrises’ “taste and industry” (Logan, Norris House 3–11). On Saturday, 20 May 1786, John Fishbourne Mifflin rambled through the Norris garden alone, a frequent habit. At about 127 pounds, he was a slight figure. He carried a cane, which as a twenty-seven year old he did not quite need. He was very nearsighted. His...