Chastity . . . but not yet
Peter Ackroyd
In The Dorian Mode: A Life of John Gray, 1866-1934 Brocard Sewell (Tabb House £18)
John Gray, who proceeded from the gutter to the altar, who was known in his Youth as 'Dorian' to Oscar Wilde and in his old age as 'the Canon' to his Scottish Parishioners, is one of those figures who are remarkable chiefly because they exemplify under almost laboratory conditions the tastes and tendencies of their period.
_He was born in Bethnal Green of a methodist family, and worked as a boy in the Woolwich Arsenal — his first, but by no means his last, contact with working men. His cleverness and natural ambition led him into the Civil Service, although his taste for what Fr Sewell calls 'higher education' was not fully satisfied until he began studying at the Scots College in !tome. This was, in this period, about as high' as you could get, and John Gray seems to have been made for the smell of in- sense and the swing of the thurible. He was, In fact, received into the Roman commu- nion in 1890 although, since he then engag- ed in an even more disciplined 'course of sin', it may only have been a fashionable conversion: Roman Catholicism and homosexuality were then the Swan and the Edgar of aesthetic young men. His literary predilections brought him Within the damned circle of the Nineties Poets and writers, and among his compan- ions were Dowson and Symons. Mr Sewell quotes at length from Gray's published P„°etrY, some of which is remarkably fine. His translations from Rimbaud are some of the best I have seen, and his work in volumes like Silverpoints and Spiritual Poems is marked by great vigour of expres- swn, and an energetic deployment of con- ventional forms. Here is the first stanza frcw1 his version of Rimbaud's Charleville':
The square, with gravel paths and shabby lawns. Correct, the trees and flowers repress their yawns. The tradesman brings his favourite conceit, To air it, while he stifles with the heat.
His friendships were not entirely literary, however, and his interest in strange sins Drought him into the company of Uranians Who paraded around the male brothels of the Lower Cut, or loitered in such obscure meeting places as the Queensway skating rink where, as one interested observer has remarked, 'strange flowers bloomed upon the lee' The emperor of this giggling corn- PanY was of course Oscar Wilde. Fr Sewell suggests that Wilde did not 'pick up' Gray as Wildean biographers have intimated but met him at one literary society or another: this is a possibility, although Gray's astonishing good looks would have been of more enduring interest to Wilde than his poetic talents. It is not clear who eventually 'dropped' whom, but the memory of their friendship was powerful enough eventually to persuade Wilde that Gray was a more fit- ting object of his attentions than Alfred Douglas.
Gray did not, at the time of Wilde's ar- rest and trial, travel abroad under an assumed name as so many others did: he had taken the precaution of distancing himself from him in advance. He was aided and abetted in this manoeuvre by Marc- Andre Raffalovitch, a rich homosexual who had been offended by Wilde's remarks about his social proselytising. He was the one of whom Wilde said that he wished to open a salon and ended up with a saloon: Wilde once arrived at his door and asked the butler if he had a table for six. Raf- falovitch became Gray's patron and, since their shared tastes included St John of the Cross as well as boys, he continued to sup- port him when he left the stews and travell-
ed to Rome in order to study for holy orders.
Gray became a priest at St Patrick's, Edinburgh — a poor parish where he seems to have been genuinely devoted to his drunken and sometimes difficult flock. Raffalovitch, now himself converted, helped Gray to build a new church in the more fashionable district of Morningside, and it was here that Gray spent the re- mainder of his not so silent ministry. His presbytery had framed lithographs by Shan- non and Ricketts, the 'Valeites', and Gray's bed always had black sheets upon it; his new church,. St Peter's, was famous for its male-voice choir and Gray insisted that no women were allowed to enter the sanctuary.
This somewhat aesthetic devotion does, however, have its vulgar aspects: when Gray and Raffalovitch helped to establish a Dominican foundation in Edinburgh, some chandeliers, a painting by Moreau of Apollyon and the Dragon and various 'odd- ments of crystal purchased in junk shops' were introduced into its chapel. This was not all their own work: the chandelier and the knick-knacks were purchased by the superior, Father Fabian Dix, who was 'a friend of Ivor Novello and Anton Dolin'.
Gray and Raffalovitch were now in- separable; they spent part of each day together and went on walking tours in each others' company. When Gray travelled away by himself, he sent a telegram to Raf- falovitch every afternoon. They needed each other, and the most affecting aspect of this biography is the closeness between them which survived everything: in fact, Gray seems to have depended upon his patron and mentor so much that he telephoned Raffalovitch after the latter's death to enquire about the funeral ar- rangements.
They had both escaped the 19th century just in time, and while their erstwhile con- temporaries died or committed suicide in rapid succession they entered a more peaceful, and perhaps more worthy, new life. Gray seems, however, to have been haunted by guilt for his old sins: he thought, his sister said, that 'although he was a white man, he was black inside'.
In this agreeable although over-priced book, Brocard Sewell avoids the kind of psychological examination which such remarks might prompt in a more inquisitive biographer. Indeed, he is chary of supply- ing anything except the factual record of Gray's life. It is in that respect a somewhat old-fashioned biography, more in the nature of a panegyric than a 'life', but it is not noticeably the worse for that. Canon Gray does not need an inquisition; he is the model of a man saved from foolishness and error, although also denied the genius which can sometimes spring from both.
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