Gay dogs
Francis King
The Cleveland Street Affair Levv,i5 Chester, David Leitch and 00" Simpson (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £5.95) So much has been published recently anel)( the Cleveland Street scandal that the th.r.'"-t authors of this latest book on the suhi.e,,cd can hardly be blamed if it exhales the k!"b of fug that emanates from a Soho strip-cluo when the doors open in the early hours t let out its last customers. The chief events can be easily suninlar: ised. In 1889 a Post Office constable. c°/1„,/ ducting a routine investigation into theft! s'a small amounts of money, interrogateuke fifteen-year-old messenger boy who had t" f suspiciously large sum (for those daYs..i).°,, eighteen shillings on him. The boY, nantly denying that he was a thief, reveal'i, that he had been paid for 'doing sorne Pra vate work away from the office,r,..ke 'gentleman' in Cleveland Street. ',"a 'gentleman' proved to be the keener 01 male brothel. In the subsequent investigation, itcafe to light that one of the frequenters of t"t brothel was Lord Arthur ('Podge')Sornersen' son of the eighth Duke of Beaufort and intimate of the Prince of Wales later h Edward VII), whom he advised 00 k"er bloodstock. It seemed probable that prominent people were involved, althoa." one of those suspected, Lord Euston, was cl notorious womaniser who had merely called at 19 Cleveland Street in the mistaken hope of finding female poses plastiques fa Victorian euphemism, like 'Swedish Massage' today). Eventually it was the small fry—the Ponces and the 'renters'—who found themselves in prison, while their clients mysteri°LislY escaped prosecution. Not for the last time in such circumstances, there had been a cover-up; and the authors show convincingly that it was the Prime Minister himself, Lord Salisbury, who skilfully and unobtrusively orchestrated each of the delays and legal obfuscations by which it was achieved. The authors believe that this cover-up was regarded as essential because of the possibnilitY that it would become known that the "ince of Wales's heir, later Duke of Clarence, had been a visitor to the brothel. But the evidence that this pathetic, almost half-witted youth indulged in homosexual Practices is as insubstantial as the rumour that he was Jack the Ripper. It would be characteristic of the Prince to protect a friend, and it would be no less characteristic 0fSalisbury not to wish to see a member of his ruling caste in the dock. In any case, the aristocracy of that time, like the working class, had a far more robust attitude to sex than the emergent middle class. In a style that is often slangy and graceless —Disraeli is described as 'no slouch at invective and a letter as 'feisty'—the authors w°rk* hard both to give the case more imPortance than it really merits and to pad out their book with irrelevant facts about such subjects as the Duke of Clarence's travels and Labouchere's antecedents. They make some silly statements. The 'cinq sept' ours, chosen by Edward VII for dalliance !)n his visits to Paris, can hardly be said to be :ill reserved for adultery in France in honvur of his memory' ; they are merely conwenient because they come between quitting °rk and an the th returning home for dinner. Nor returning shock of discovering a homoce)kual ring in the headquarters of the Post ,,fnee be regarded as being in any way corn'fithensurate with that caused by the revelation at a present-day government department "4cl been infiltrated by spies.
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he book is also sometimes slapdash. It is 'e'eui correct to say that in the nineteenth
• .liturY men would 'refer to themselves as anticipating our contemporary usat that period was merely slang :ill; 'dissolute' or 'immoral.' Similarly, the in hors are wrong in saying that 'pouf' was, .N common use. 'Margery,"Mary-Anne, There is 'sissy' were all more usual. ike here is a book to be written about people Lord Arthur Somerset and, of a later omW-oileration, Lord Beauchamp: men and even n:en of high position who were suddenly erinoured and driven into exile by a hypoexe`leal sexual code that forgave everything broeliPt being found out. It is a pity that these that'arit investigative journalists did not tell story instead of retelling this one.
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