Men in Eden: William Drummond Stewart and Same-Sex Desire in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade

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183 9 When he arrived in St. Louis at the close of the summer of 1836, William Drummond Stewart found several letters waiting for him. Archibald, his youngest brother, wrote welcoming him home from the wilds. George, the fourth of the Stewart sons (a lifelong bachelor who was then living with his two spinster aunts on one of the family estates, Logiealmond) enthused about progress on the new Murthly Castle. One of the Logiealmond aunts, Frances Marie Drummond (Aunt Fanny), worried that poor William was being forced to endure a prolonged stay in America because he had no money to purchase a return ticket. She offered to send him £100. She also wrote that his brother Thomas was visiting on leave from the seminary, but that he would soon be returning to Rome. At this time, in a letter that has not survived, William learned that his elder brother, John, was seriously — perhaps fatally — ill. Given the unresolved rancor concerning their father’s estate, the information perhaps triggered a storm of conflicting emotions. If John were not to recover from his illness, William’s life would necessarily undergo profound changes. In 1832 John had married the former Lady Jane Steuart, but they were as yet childless. Were John to die without a son, William would inherit the title, the lands, and the bulk of the family fortune. Notably missing from the stack of letters that awaited him in St. Louis was any envelope with the stationery mark of his brother’s 184 Edinburgh solicitor forwarding the much-needed remittance checks, so — family affection aside — the question of money loomed large. William wrote to John pointing out that the trust had failed to send him his annuity and requesting once again that he receive the entire£3,000 as a lump sum. John eventually replied that due to the enormous amounts being expended on the construction of the new castle, there was simply no money available to send to him. It is perhaps an indication of the emotional distance between the brothers that John’s letter is dated December 26, 1836, but makes no mention of the fact that it was written on William’s birthday. Now that Stewart was once again back in St. Louis, and with the departure of Adolph Sillem for Hamburg, Antoine Clement resumed his former prominence in Stewart’s life. Their on-again, off-again relationship had continued since their first acquaintance at the 1833 rendezvous, but it is difficult to trace the course of their romance since, unlike some of the other men traveling to and from the Rockies, Clement often passed without comment in the letters, journals, and memoirs that are the chief sources of information about the events of those years. If he is noted at all, it is a brief reference to his hunting skills. As a Métis he blended into the background, little more than one of “the boys” — local color for the American or European travelers who eagerly devoured the buffalo ribs his hunting skills procured while never considering it necessary to learn his name. Hence we know much more about the actions of less important figures such as Charles Ashworth and Adolph Sillem. If Clement is mentioned at all in the contemporary sources, he is usually referred to as “Antoine the Hunter” — with no last name. By the autumn of 1836, as Stewart and Clement boarded a steamboat heading for New Orleans, the Scotsman had probably been sexually active in America for over four years, and while all of his possible partners have not been identified, a pattern does begin to emerge. Stewart was attracted to somewhat younger men. Adolph Sillem was only twenty-five. In Altowan the young English nobleman Roallan is nineteen at the beginning of the novel, and the title character in Edward Warren is “not [yet] nineteen.” The mysterious and alluring Lord Fernwold is 185 “about twenty.” When “Antoine Clement” first appears in Edward Warren he is “under twenty.” Stewart seems to have considered that an ideal age. Most of his partners fall into an age group of eighteen to twenty-five — young men who have reached physical maturity but who retain an adolescent boisterousness, reckless in their profligacy, insatiable in their appetites, effusive in their gratitude, mercurial in their affections, by turns playful and petulant, neglectful and demanding, intellectually curious but with a frustratingly short attention span. In other words, young...