{{Short description|American author and editor (1843–1909)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2021}} {{Infobox person | name = | image = Charles Warren Stoddard.jpg | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1843|08|07}} | birth_place = Rochester, New York, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1909|04|23|1843|08|07}} | death_place = Monterey, California, U.S. | resting_place = San Carlos Cemetery, Monterey, California, U.S.<ref>cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19090427.2.30</ref> | other_names = | occupation = | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = | education = | signature = Signature of Charles Warren Stoddard (1843–1909).png }}
'''Charles Warren Stoddard''' (August 7, 1843 {{ndash}} April 23, 1909) was an American author and editor best known for his travel books about Polynesian life.
==Biography== Charles Warren Stoddard was born in Rochester, New York on August 7, 1843. He was descended in a direct line from Anthony Stoddard of England, who settled at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1639.
While he was still a child, he moved with his parents to New York City. In 1855, the family migrated to San Francisco, California when his father found a job at a mercantile firm. Stoddard was 11 and was immediately smitten with the city and, as he recalled, its "natural tendency to overdress, to over-decorate, to overdo almost everything".<ref>Tarnoff, Ben. ''The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature''. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 38. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}}</ref> In 1857, he joined his ill brother Ned on a restorative trip to the East Coast, where they stayed at their grandfather's farm in western New York.<ref>Tarnoff, Ben. ''The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature''. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 39. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}}</ref> He returned to San Francisco to rejoin his family by 1859.
Stoddard began writing verses at a young age amid the growing literary climate of California. His first published work saw print in ''The Golden Era'' for September 1862 under the pseudonym "Pip Pepperpod". He later recalled how he clandestinely slipped his contribution into the ''Era'''s mailbox without anyone knowing: "No member of my family suspected that I was so bold as to dream of entering the circle of the elect who wrote regularly every week for the chief literary organ west of the Rocky Mountains".<ref>Tarnoff, Ben. ''The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature''. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014: 40. {{ISBN|978-1-59420-473-9}}</ref> His writings were well received and were later published as ''Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard''. Poor health compelled him to give up his plans for a college education. He tried a career on the stage without success.
===Polynesia=== In 1864, Stoddard visited the South Sea Islands where he wrote ''South-Sea Idyls'', a series of letters he sent to a friend. This friend had them published in book form in 1873. "They are," wrote William Dean Howells, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean,"<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lyons|first1=Paul|title=American Pacificism: Oceania in the U.S. Imagination|date=2006|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|page=122|isbn=9781134264155|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-2V_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA122|access-date=May 17, 2015}}</ref> but are also exceedingly homoerotic.<ref>Austen, Roger, ''Stoddard's Little Tricks in South Sea Idyls'' in Kellogg, Stuart (ed.) ''Literary Visions of Homosexuality'', The Haworth Press, New York 1983, {{ISBN|0-86656-183-8}}, p74.</ref> Stoddard made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and wrote his impressions in ''Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes'' and ''The Island of Tranquil Delights''.
Stoddard visited Molokai several times and became well acquainted with Father Damien–a Catholic saint since 2009–who ministered to the lepers there. Stoddard's ''The Lepers of Molokai'', according to Robert Louis Stevenson, did much to establish Father Damien's position in public esteem. In 1867, soon after his first visit to the South Sea Islands, Stoddard was received into the Catholic Church. He told the story of his conversion in a small book, ''A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted'', of which he said: "Here you have my inner life all laid bare."
===Friends=== In 1867, Stoddard converted to Catholicism.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature|last=Tarnoff|first=Benjamin|publisher=Penguin Books|year=2014|isbn=9781594204739|pages=143}}</ref> In 1869, he became good friends with travel writer Theresa Yelverton.<ref>Chloë Schama, ''Wild Romance: A Victorian Story'' (New York: Walker & Company), 151-153</ref>
In 1873, he started on a long tour as special correspondent of the ''San Francisco Chronicle''. His roving commission carried no restrictions of any kind. For five years, he traveled through Europe and went as far east as Palestine and Egypt. He sent considerable material to his newspaper, much of which it never printed, though some of it was among his best work. Around 1880, Stoddard served co-editor of the ''Overland Monthly'' with Bret Harte and Ina Coolbrith.
In 1891, Stoddard spent the summer aboard the yacht "Ramona" owned by Bohemian Club darling Harry Gillig and his wife, heiress Aimee Crocker, sailing the Atlantic Coast. Other guests of the pleasure boat were painter Theodore Wores, playwrights Augustus Thomas and Clay Greene, editor Jerome Hart, and actor Henry Woodruff.
===Notre Dame=== In 1885, having decided to settle down, he accepted the position of chair of the English literature department at the University of Notre Dame. He resigned, officially citing malaria. According to literary historian Roger Austen has written that the real reason behind Stoddard's decision was the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality.<ref name="auto">{{cite book |last1=Austen |first1=Roger |last2=Crowley |first2=John W. |year=1995 |title=Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard |publisher=Univ of Massachusetts Press |isbn=978-0870239809 }}</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2015}} John W. Crowley<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20101017082419/http://www.glbtq.com/contributors/bio%20161.html GLBTQ >>Contributor Biography: John W. Crowley ]</ref> maintains that Stoddard clashed with colleagues over his attentions to the students.<ref name="stoddard_cw">{{cite web|url=http://www.glbtq.com/literature/stoddard_cw.html |title=GLBTQ >> literature >> Stoddard, Charles Warren by John W. Crowley|access-date=2014-12-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150207104208/http://www.glbtq.com/literature/stoddard_cw.html |archive-date=2015-02-07 }}</ref>
The same reasons, whether limited to ill-health or also related to behavioral matters, caused him to resign a corresponding position that he held at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. from 1889 to 1902. In a short time, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, intending to devote himself exclusively to literary work. A serious and almost fatal illness interfered with his plans.<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14298b.htm Flaherty, Matthew. "Charles Warren Stoddard." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 19 Apr. 2023 ]</ref> He published his ''Exits and Entrances'', a book of essays and sketches which he called his favorite work, probably because it told of his friendship with Stevenson and of other literary acquaintances.
In April 1903, he returned to San Francisco and was the guest of honor at a welcome-home party at the Bohemian Club with Henry James and Enrico Caruso in attendance. He then settled in Monterey, California, with a hope of recovering his health, although he traveled within California and was in San Francisco during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ebar.com/arts&culture/artarticle.php|title=Bay Area Reporter :: Art Article.php|website=The Bay Area Reporter / B.A.R. Inc.}}</ref>
He stayed on in Monterey, where he was diagnosed with heart disease, until his death from a heart attack on April 23, 1909.<ref name="auto"/>{{page needed|date=May 2015}}
===Private life=== Stoddard was homosexual.<ref name="stoddard_cw"/> He praised South Sea societies' receptiveness to homosexual liaisons and lived in relationships with men.
From San Francisco, late in 1866, Stoddard sent his newly published ''Poems'' to Herman Melville, along with news that in Hawaii he had found no traces of Melville. Having written even more fervently to Walt Whitman, Stoddard had been excited by ''Typee'', finding the Kory-Kory character so stimulating that he wrote a story celebrating the sort of male friendships to which Melville had more than once alluded. From the poems Stoddard sent, Melville may have sensed no homosexual undercurrent, and the extant draft of his reply in January 1867 is noncommittal.
Francis Millet, a well-regarded American Academic Classicist artist, had a studio in Rome in the early 1870s and Venice in the mid-1870s, where he lived with Stoddard. Author Jonathan Ned Katz presents letters from Millet to Stoddard that suggest they had a romantic and intimate affair while living a bohemian life together.<ref>{{Citation | last = Katz | first = Jonathan Ned | title = Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality | place = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | year = 2001}}.</ref> Amy Sueyoshi additionally traces Stoddard's affair with Yone Noguchi through their passionate correspondence to one another.<ref>{{Citation | last = Sueyoshi | first = Amy | title = Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi | place = Honolulu | publisher = University of Hawai'i Press | year = 2012}}.</ref>
In the film ''Leonie'', Stoddard (portrayed by Patrick Weathers) is shown being flirtatious with the character Yone Noguchi.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1426328/fullcredits|title=Leonie (2010)|via=www.imdb.com}}</ref>
==Works== thumb|Image extracted ''A Trip to Hawaii'' (edition 1892)
He said of his only novel, ''For the Pleasure of His Company'', "Here you have my Confessions." So strictly biographical are most of his writings that Stoddard hoped by supplying a few missing links to enable the reader to trace out the whole story of his life.
Besides the books already mentioned, he wrote:
* ''South Sea Idylls'' (1873) * ''Summer Cruising in the South Seas'' (1874) * ''Marshallah, a Flight into Egypt'' (1885); * ''A Trip to Hawaii'' (1885) * ''In the Footprints of the Padres'' (1902) * ''Cruising among the Caribbees'' (1893) * ''Hawaiian Life'' (1894) * ''Saint Anthony, The Wonder-Worker of Padua'' (1896) * ''A Cruise under the Crescent'' (1898) * ''Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska'' (1899) * ''Father Damien, a Sketch'' (1903) * ''For the Pleasure of His Company'' (1903) * ''With Staff and Scrip'' (1904) * ''Hither and Yon'' * ''The Confessions of a Reformed Poet'' (1907) * ''The Dream Lady'' (1907)
==Bibliography== * Austen, Roger, ''Stoddard's Little Tricks in South Sea Idyls'' in Kellogg, Stuart (ed.) ''Literary Visions of Homosexuality'', The Haworth Press, New York 1983, {{ISBN|0-86656-183-8}} * Austen, Roger, ''Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard'', The University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst 1995, {{ISBN|978-0870239809}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{Catholic|wstitle=Charles Warren Stoddard}}
==External links== {{commons category}} {{Wikiquote}} * {{Gutenberg author |id=1170| name=Charles Warren Stoddard}} * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Charles Warren Stoddard}} ** [https://archive.org/stream/nationalmagazine21brayrich#page/304/mode/1up 1905 Article with photos] * {{Librivox author |id=2255}} * [http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=books&article=863 Peter Garland, "Charles Warren Stoddard", ''Bay Area Reporter'' (August 7, 2014)] * [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf429003qp/ Guide to the Collection of Charles Warren Stoddard] at The Bancroft Library
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoddard, Charles Warren}} Category:1843 births Category:1909 deaths Category:Writers from Rochester, New York Category:American Roman Catholics Category:19th-century American poets Category:20th-century American novelists Category:American male novelists Category:19th-century American memoirists Category:University of Notre Dame faculty Category:Catholic University of America faculty Category:American reporters and correspondents Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:American gay writers Category:American LGBTQ poets Category:American LGBTQ novelists Category:LGBTQ Roman Catholics Category:LGBTQ people from New York (state) Category:20th-century American poets Category:American male poets Category:19th-century American novelists Category:19th-century American male writers Category:Journalists from New York (state) Category:Novelists from California Category:Journalists from California Category:Novelists from New York (state) Category:20th-century American male writers Category:Novelists from Indiana Category:American male non-fiction writers Category:Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Category:Gay poets Category:19th-century American LGBTQ people Category:20th-century American LGBTQ people Category:20th-century American travel writers Category:American people of English descent