Harvard's 5El'l‘El' taurt
ll Book Review

BY ROBERT WILLIAM WOLFF

illiarn Wrights book about the
long-hidden dastardly deeds of
Harvard President A. Lawrence
Lowell and his deans comes under the
category of “aren’t we fortunate, even
blessed, not to have been born 100 years
earlier!” Some pretty ugly things" hap-
pened to our queer sisters and brothers
in the supposedly strong—on-human-rights
United States of America during the 20th
century. But this group of adrninistra-
tors holding court in secret following a
complaint about homosexual activities
at the nation’s first and most presti-
gious educational institution must rank
among the most damaging sequence
of events of that century. The Harvard
story as told by Wright is riveting, af-
fecting, and impossible to put down.
Wright looks at the events and the peo-
ple who caused them from many vantage
points. This helps the reader grasp the era,
the society, the institution, and the motiva-
tions and concerns of the men trapped in
the web spun by Lowell and his colleagues.
Thankfully there has been significant prog-
1€SS.S_i7I,'.l(;t-’.‘ I920. ,
I’ll leave the nuanced telling of this in-
triguing tale to Wright. But to encourage
readers to pick up the book, I wiH sketch
out the beginning of the tale. Cyril Wilcox,
a sophomore in the class of 1922, has a
lover, Harry Dreyfus. Dreyfus is a townie
who operates a tavern in Boston. Like
most gay men of the era, Cyril is not out
to his family. The Wilcox family wakes
one morning to find that Cyril has used
gas to kill himself. After his death, two
letters arriving from friends of Cyril out
him to his family. The letters are Written
in such a way that it is immediately clear
that Cyril understands gay life and would

 

I enjoy receiving letters from the obviously

homosexual men who wrote them.

The Wilcox family was in shock and
was grieving deeply. Lester Wilcox, who
had tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate his
younger brother, becomes convinced that
Harvard and Harry Dreyfus are respon-
sible for placing Cyril in a situation for ‘
which suicide was his only solution. With
a trusted member of the Harvard faculty
of his previous acquaintance, Lester
Wilcox goes to President Lowell’s office,
finds him away, engaged in high level
diplomatic endeavors with President
Coolidge. Lester meets with Acting Dean
of Harvard College" Chester Greenough,
who later becomes a key member of the
secret court. Wilcox, having confronted
at the funeral the student who hosted
gay parties at the college, gets this young
man to identify his brother’s lover.

After accusing Harvard of his brother’s
Calamity, Lester goes to Harry Dreyfus’
home. He accuses Dreyfus and beats '
him up. He insists that Dreyfus make a
list of homosexuals at Harvard. After
the list is made, he snatches it and takes
these names to Dean Greenough. This

action kicks
off a court
that made
secret, quick,
decisive and
unconditional
decisions
about the
guilt or inno-
cence of each

 I"‘l/?\l'<\-‘Al'{l.7‘$ 
' : S1;c.1uz'r CC)t_..1R‘I' ‘

man, and

then brought

down a sen-

tence on each

designed

to make it Harvard's Secret Court:
impossible The Savage 1920 Purge
for each to . of Campus Homosexuals
become ed“ William Wright 2005,
Gated or to New York, St. Martin's
be employed Press

anywhere.

Inspector

Javert of Les Miserables had nothing on
this group of Harvard administrators.
There is much more to the story of Har-
vardis Secret Court. _I‘ll leave that to the
reader’s experience with Wright’s book.
Opportunities presented themselves
for the members of the court to offer
clemency, for forgiveness, for under-
standing extenuating circumstances. It is

I clear from the actions of these powerful

men that they had no ability to forgive
what these young men, in their formative
years, had done. Although it certainly

* should not have mattered, the men who

married and lived apparently heterosexu-
al lives were treated the same as the men
who continued to demonstrate primary
focus on other men.

Instead, these college administrators
vindictively set out procedures in the
offices of Harvard to ensure that the pre-
sumed‘ guilt of the parties brought before
their court would haunt and inhibit the
men throughout their lives. For example,
any educational institutions requesting
information about a man found guilty by
this court was to be told that the man
would never be readmitted to Harvard
and that Harvard recommended against
them being admitted to any other institu-
tion. And, the deans gave instructions to
the appropriate offices so that the rules
stuck for decades.

Several of the men accused by the
court did, however, go on to achieve major
prominence; among them two who became
a federal judge and a Broadway producer,
respectively. But most achieved much less
during their lives than was anticipated
when they were admitted to Harvard, and
several, like Wilcox, committed suicide.

For those who want to know our his-
tory and those who enjoy the telling of a
fascinating story, this book is for you. V

Robert William Wolff is a scenery and
lighting designer who lives in Randolph.
He serves on the R.U.1.2? board and
volunteers for OITM.

 

MAY 2006 I out in the mountains 2::

Birds in Full: lln Interview
with lluthnr Brud Itessler

BY TIM MILLER

 in Fall, the giriiazirig new novel
from Brad Kessler, is a beautiful, pro-
foundly moving st.ory t.hat. explores
a group of human beings who gat.he.raI.tl1e
inn of a gay couple alter a terrible crasli

of a passenger jet into t.he sea nearby. The
book takes on the deepest. myst.eries of
death and love and offers such a wise and
rooted way of being with these ancient.
mysteries in all their splendor and sorrow.
The emotional wallop of the loss sneaks

up on us throughout. the. whole book as the
gay men at the center of the inn, which has
welcomed the loved ones of the passengers
who died in the crash, are changed and
challenged by the enormity of this event.

I read Birds in Fall with that tot.ally
bonding, obsessed, feverish urgency that.
I seek out - where the world of the book
becomes so compelling I can’t stop being
with the characters and the spaces they
inhabit. The book deepened my sense of
life and death and love. There is no higher
praise I could imagine. Ispoke with Brad
Kessler recently at his home in Sandgate,
Vermont, about his remarkable new novel.

 

TM: You begin your novel with an
airplane disaster killing all on board

- based on the 1998 crash of
SwissAir flight #11 1 off the
coast of _Nova Scotia. This
leads the family and loved
ones of the lost passengers
to the inn of a gay couple
near the crash site. How did
the real air tragedy inform your novel?
BIC Ihad a friend who died on that SwissAir
flight. For months they searched the sea

for him, until they found a fragment large
enough for a positively identification. There
was something terrible and haunting about
that waiting period, that limbo state before
they could officially pronounce him dead. A
lot of people lived through that harrowing
time. During it, everyone in Nova Scotia
dropped what they were doing to help these
families. That’s what partly inspired the
novel, complete strangers assisting other
strangers from around the world.

TM: Why choose to have a gay charac-
ter/couple at the center of the novel,
the keepers of this charged space?

BK: It was never a conscious decision to
have a gay protagonist. Kevin, the innkeeper,
was initially a rather minor character But

as the novel evolved, he quickly became

the pole star around which all the others
orbited. His sexuality was never a big deal

to me. The fact that he and Douglas were
gay seemed secondary to who they were as
people — straight or gay, or in between. That
said, Kevin is an outsider; he’s a philosopher",
he gardens and he likes to cook. As such

I identified with him. What Flaubert said

of his Emma Bovary, I could say of Kevin
Gearns - Kevin c’est moi.

Brad Kessler Reading

April 29, 2006
Northshire Bookstore
Manchester, Vermont‘

TM: But you are a straight man married
to a woman.

BK: Yes. And I wouldn’t. pretend to be
anything otherwise. But. how stilling those
categories can he! I low they narrow us to
near nothing! The wonderful thing about.
writing tletion is that, it‘ you are lionesl.
enough, and empathetir-. enough, you can
slip into the skins of people who are not
you.

TM: And yet there are things that Kevin
Gearns knows because he is a gay man.
BK: That's t.me. My Kevin lived through
the AIDS epidemic in the 80s in New York
City and many of his friends (lied alone in
rooms, shunned by the larger culture. The
reason he’s moved t.o this isolated island
off Nova Scotia is partly to forget. all the
death he’s experienced. And yet, death
follows him in the guise of this plane
crash. So as a gay man who cared for the
dying, he knows first of all how to care for
people. He knows how to deal with tragic
death; he also knows how to survive.

TM: I was so moved by the rich space
of love and loss the novel draws us
into. i was pulled deeply into my own
memories of loss of loved ones to AIDS.

I suppose from the ancient myths of

Orpheus
right up to
the movie
Titanic, this
is the core
subject of
our human
tribe. What
paths and
lessons
does your
book offer us about living and dying?
BK: Wow. That’s a big one. What I can talk
about is mythology, because there’s a lot
of storytelling and mythology that happens
in the heart of this novel. The lesson we
learn from much of classical myth and

the classicists themselves is that nothing
really dies - it just changes into some-
thing else. That though the form of things
changes, the essential spirit or “soul” or
essence doesn't really die. Everything is
always in a state of “becoming"- even own
our selves. As Walt Whitman wrote, “If you
want me again, look for me under your
boot-soles." V

Tim Miller is a solo performer and the
author of the books ”Shirts & Skin,”
"Body Blows" and ”1001 Beds." He can
be reached at his website http://home-
town.aol.com/mi|lertale/