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78 f o u r Queer Intimacies  1899–1904 By December 1903 Yone Noguchi appeared to be married to Léonie Gilmour, even as he reinforced his engagement to Ethel Armes and wrote letters of affection to Charles Warren Stoddard. Yone and Ethel’s relationship proved particularly tortured as the two waded through countless disagreements. As they mended their relationship with each tumultuous turn, they insistently avowed that they hoped to marry one another. Yet their most important love may not have been with one another. Charlie remained a key figure in Yone’s life, and Ethel herself seemed to prefer long-term romantic relationships with women rather than men. Part of her attraction to Yone stemmed from the fact that he held characteristics atypical of men. Yone and Ethel’s engagement became undeniably queer as they promised to take each other’s hand in marriage even in the midst of more passionate connections with members of the same sex.1 In their articulations and enactments of love, Yone and Ethel’s affairs would not only demonstrate how seemingly separate spheres of male and female friendship overlapped intimately, but also how these affections within the white bohemian community often took on explicitly racialized tones. As Ethel and Yone’s connection grew, Yone’s attention toward Charlie appeared to wane. When Charlie stood at death’s door in winter of 1904, Yone responded with uncharacteristic coolness. Doctors at Cambridge Hospital diagnosed him with “brain congestion” after Stoddard was found unconscious. People assumed his end loomed close at hand. Relatives and friends paid their last respects, and a priest delivered last rites. Various Queer Intimacies 79 newspapers and magazines prepared and even published eulogies.2 Yone, uncertain of which hospital to send his letter to, wrote to Prescott Hall, where Stoddard resided. “I am awfully sorry that you are not well. I shall come up and see you if you are terribly ill, of course. What’s the matter?” He ended his note: “Hoping you are better by this time. Yone” Frank Putnam responded to Yone’s inquiry by informing him the trip would be useless since Charlie would not “know” him at all. A letter from Charlie himself would later surprise Yone. Still, Charlie’s miraculous recovery did not prompt Yone to visit. On February 15, 1904, he wrote to “Dad” that though he had considered traveling to Boston, the beginning of the war with Russia had caused him to change his mind. Charlie appears to have invited Yone to travel with him to California, where he had recently received a six-month commission from the journal Sunset. Yone responded with ambivalence. “I wish I could go with you to California or anywhere. I will be good companion to you, I hope, I will—but—! I don’t know just yet.” Indeed his 1890s excitement over Charlie seemed to have vanished. Yet Yone had not lost all affection for “Dad.” “If Japan wins the game, I will take you to Japan. Then the time for us will come, you know. Just now, everything is compressed in excitement and fight. Write me again, Dad!”3 In December 1903 Ethel coveted a life of love that she might lead if she married Yone. For love, she would walk “the earth’s length” on “white hot iron.” Since she would never find her “dream” man, Ethel would marry Yone because of his devoted affection for her. “It is not so much that I am in love with him, but . . . he is crazy—quite crazy about me—and that suits me.” As a wife she could then return her husband’s undying intense love: “[I] could learn the love that I dream now is the right kind.” Her commitment to Yone remained largely a secret, however, except among her most intimate friends. Her family knew nothing of the engagement.4 Months later, in May 1904, Ethel again appeared to be on the “out” with Yone, “for good this time it seems.” Four days later, Yone wrote to Charlie in an effort to contact Ethel. “Did you hear anything about Ethel? I think our connection has been cut off.” Yone regretted falling out of touch with Ethel because of his own neglect in not writing to her for several weeks. Then, three weeks later, in early June of 1904, Ethel once again found herself planning for a May 1 wedding the following year with Yone. Impulses behind this engagement appear to have been much less [3...

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