Dear CBLF,

Fred Holland Day was an interesting character, alright. What marks him out among dozens of aesthetic, late 19th C., boy-loving flits, was the fact the NO scandal managed to attach to him, even though he lived in Boston, a scandal-prone town! He was a friend of Oscar Wilde, photographed nude teenage boys, published books, ran a sea-side retreat at which boys of all social classes could play nicely together, lived as boy-loverly a life as anyone could live....and yet for all the smoke, there was apparently no fire. Very interesting! I'm always looking for people who were able to bring a little morality into their BL interests. It's ammunition for when people want to claim that BL is all about LUST.

Dr. Patricia Fanning has come out with a book, "Through an uncommon lens," on Fred Holland Day. She lectures on it at the Boston Athenaeum, where I just heard Lewis Lapham speak a few weeks ago. The lecture is very interestingly illustrated, and well worth an intelligent listen, if you can trust yourself! (Ok, I admit it there's nudes. But you just have to imagine that you're within the stuffy Brahmin confines of the Boston Athenaeum, surrounded by moth-eaten Grottlesexers....) I look forward to meeting Professor Fanning, and perhaps reciting some of Day's (and Warren's!) favorite stories at Day's house in Norwood, now the Norwood Historical Society, where Fanning is a past president. It's a cute old Victorian House, only about an hour to the West of where I now live.

Ned Warren & Day were practically brothers, growing up in Boston and having very similar interests...

---Didaskalos



• ( http link ) Dr. Fanning lectures on Day at the Boston Athenaeum
[Anonymouse]