Marc-André Raffalovich UK

b. September 11, 1864
d, February 14, 1934

Born in Paris into a wealthy and cultivated Russo-Jewish family, Raffalovich went to England in 1882. His original intention had been to take his degree at Oxford University, but instead he settled in London. There, in his mansion in Mayfair, he entertained on a lavish scale with the object of founding a salon for writers and artists.

Oscar Wilde and others were amused by his attempts to push himself into the literary world through dinner parties. Wilde's jibe became famous: "Dear André! He came to London to found a salon and only succeeded in opening a saloon." Undeterred, and exemplifying the newly fashionable notion of homosexual as a poet, Raffalovich continued to pursue his literary interests.

Between 1884 and 1896 he published five volumes of verse, two novels and many articles, none of which received much recognition. In 1892 he met and fell in love with young poet John Henry Gray. The couple then dropped out of Wilde's circle.

In 1896 Raffalovich was received into Roman Catholic Church, taking the baptismal name of Sebastian. For the rest of his life he was a devout Catholic and a benefactor of the Dominican Order. When Gray went to Rome to study for the priesthood, Raffalovich paid his expenses.

In 1905 he followed Gray to Edinburgh and there he financed the building of St Peter's Church in Morningside, where Gray had been appointed rector and where he attended Mass every morning. The two men maintained separate households. Their friendship was intimate, though in public they treated each other with studied formality and detachement.

Raffalovich's exposition of the view that a homosexual orientation is both natural and morally neutral was a notable contribution to the late 19th century literature on the subject. But it was a mixed message, deeply impregnated with Roman Catholic moralism.



Source:
and: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001

Also see:
Father Brocard Sewell, Two Friends, John Gray and André Raffalovich, Saint Albert's Press, 1963

John Gray (1866 – 1934), UK

b. 2 March 1866
d. 14 June 1934

English poet, who may have been the inspiration behind Oscar Wilde's fictional Dorian Gray. His life partner was Marc André Raffalovich, also a poet and a notable early defender of homosexuality - which he called "unisexuality", but insisted remained at its best when chaste. Gray and Raffalovich both converted to Catholicism, and Gray was ordained a Catholic priest in 1901. After Gray was moved to a parish in Edinburgh, Raffalovich followed him. The pair continued in a close, but chaste relationship until they died four months apart in 1934

Like many of the artists of that period, Gray was a convert to Roman Catholicism. He was baptised on 14th February 1890, but soon lapsed. Wilde's trial appears to have prompted some intense soul-searching in Gray and he re-embraced Catholicism in 1895.In 1896 he gave this reversion poetic form in his volume Spiritual Poems: chiefly done out of several languages. He left his position at the Foreign Office and on 28 November 1898, at the age of 32, he entered the Scots College, Rome, to study for the priesthood. He was ordained by Cardinal Pietro Respighi at St John Lateran on 21 December 1901.He served as a priest in Edinburgh, first at Saint Patrick's and then as rector at Saint Peter's.

His most important supporter, and life partner, was Marc-André Raffalovich, a wealthy poet and early defender of homosexuality. Raffalovich himself became a Catholic in 1896 and joined the tertiary order of Dominicans. When Gray went to Edinburgh he settled nearby. He helped finance St Peter's Church in Morningside where Gray would serve as priest for the rest of his life. The two maintained a chaste relationship until Raffalovich's sudden death in 1934. A devastated Gray died exactly four months later at St. Raphael's nursing home in Edinburgh after a short illness.

Some queer historians note that in the period, the Catholic Church may have functioned as a cover, a convenient closet, for private sexual activities hiding behind a public facade of celibacy. Tirza True Latimer, for instance, writing on "The Closet" at glbtq.com, names Gray and Raffalovich as a notable example:

The decadent poet John Gray (allegedly the prototype for Wilde's Dorian Gray) and his lover André Raffalovich converted to Catholicism, for example. Gray went so far as to take the vows of priesthood. Raffalovich converted Wilde's illustrator Aubrey Beardsley to Catholicism. Even Wilde ultimately converted to Catholicism.

Max Nordau, whose treatise Degeneration made best seller lists in England in the wake of Wilde's prosecution, unmasked what he called "neo-Catholicism" as the "most distinctive stigmata of the degenerate," identifying the Catholic church as a kind of closet.