Fanny and StellaThe Love Letters of Ernest Boulton, Frederick Park, Louis Hurt, John Fiske and Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton, 18681870Excerpts from My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (1998), Edited by Rictor Norton
On April 28, 1870 Lady Stella Clinton and Miss Fanny Winifred Park otherwise known as Ernest Boulton, age twenty-two, and Frederick William Park, a twenty-three-year-old law student attended a performance at the Strand Theatre, London, in full evening frocks. The police had been keeping an eye on this pair since 1869, and they were arrested, together with another man, while two more of their associates escaped. All of the men lived at separate addresses, but they kept a house on Wakefield Street, off Regent Square, where they would dress up before going out of an evening, and where they stayed with friends for a day or two at a time. The police made an inventory: sixteen dresses in satin or silk with suitable lace trimmings, a dozen petticoats, ten cloaks and jackets, half a dozen bodices, several bonnets and hats, twenty chignons, and a variety of stays, drawers, stockings, boots, curling-irons, gloves, boxes of violet powder and bloom of roses. Their landlady described their dresses as "very extreme." Boulton was very good looking, effeminate, and musical, with a wonderful soprano voice, and he and Park played female parts in amateur theatricals in legit theatres, country houses and elsewhere. Earlier that month Fanny and Stella, as "sisters," attended the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, dressed as women. They also frequented the theatres and Burlington Arcade dressed as men, but wearing make-up, winking at respectable gentleman, which initially attracted the attention of the police. Their apartments were searched, and letters from John Safford Fiske were found. Fiske's apartment in Edinburgh was searched, and behind the fire grate in his bedroom police found an album of photographs of Boulton in female attire. Fiske had received enough advance warning to destroy Boulton's letters. Fiske was an American citizen who had lived in Edinburgh for two and a half years. He was a friend of Louis Charles Hurt, a young Post Office surveyor, a boyhood friend of Boulton. From October 1868 through April 1869 Boulton lived with Hurt in Edinburgh, and this is how Fiske met and fell in love with Boulton, to whom he wrote romantic letters after Boulton returned to London. Boulton and Park were initially arrested for appearing in public in women's clothes, a misdemeanour, but after a police surgeon examined them they were charged with conspiracy to commit a felony (i.e. sodomy). Their initial appearance in the dock was startling; Boulton, with wig and plaited chignon, wore a cherry- coloured silk evening dress, trimmed with white lace, and bracelets on his bare arms, while Park, his flaxen hair in curls, wore a dark green satin dress, low necked, trimmed with black lace, and a black lace shawl, and a pair of white kid gloves. The court was besieged by an enormous crowd through the committal proceedings, and the trial appropriately called The Queen v. Boulton and Others (Boulton, Park, Fiske, Hurt, and two others in absentia) continued throughout most of May the following year. One person connected with the case was Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton, MP, third son of the Duke of Newcastle. Boulton told others "I am Lady Clinton, Lord Arthur's wife," and showed the wedding ring on his finger. Lord Arthur lodged near him, paid for Stella's hairdresser who came every morning, and had ordered from the stationers a seal engraved "Stella" and even visiting cards printed "Lady Arthur Clinton." There are theatre posters of Lord Arthur and Boulton performing together in the play A Morning Call in which Lord Arthur played Sir Edward Arnold and Boulton played Mrs Chillington, and in Love and Rain, in which Lord Arthur played Captain Charles Lumley and Boulton played Lady Jane Desmond, a Young Widow. Lord Arthur's name was on the original indictment, but he died on June 18, 1870, age thirty, before the case came to court, reportedly from scarlet fever exacerbated by anxiety (but in fact suicide). One full day during the trial was spent reading out more than a thousand letters by the defendants, most of which still exist in the Public Record Office, Hurt to Boulton, Hurt to Fiske, Hurt to Lord Arthur, Fiske to Boulton, Willie Somerville (a City clerk, who had absconded) to Boulton, Park to Lord Arthur. But conviction of conspiracy to commit a felony could not be sustained without proof of the actual commission of the felony; even the prosecution came to feel that all the evidence merely pointed to disgraceful behaviour. It has been argued that the jury either did not comprehend the existence of the gay subculture (they certainly missed the meaning of the gay slang in the letters), or that they wilfully blinded themselves to the subversive facts of life. All the defendants were acquitted, to loud cheers and cries of Bravo! from the gallery.
Ernest Boulton to Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton4th December 1868
My dear Arthur,
[Several days later] I shall be unable to come down on the 18th. Write at once; and if you have any coin, I could do with a little. [Several days later]
My dear Arthur, [Several days later]
My dear Arthur,
Frederick William Park to Lord Arthur Clinton Duke Street
My dearest Arthur, Fanny Winifred Park [No date]
My dearest Arthur, Fan
Duke Street,
My dearest Arthur, Fanny
Louis Charles Hurt to Ernest Boulton Lochalsh, Inverness, and Wick I have told my mother that you are coming, but have not yet had time to receive her answer. I thought it well to tell her that you were very effeminate, but I hope you will do your best to appear as manly as you can at any rate in the face. I therefore beg of you to let your moustache grow at once. . . . even if in town, I would not go to [the Derby] with you in drag. . . . I am sorry to hear of your going about in drag so much. I know the moustache has no chance while this sort of thing goes on. You have now less than a month to grow . . . Of course I won't pay any drag bills, except the one in Edinburgh. I should like you to have a little more principle than I fear you have as to paying debts.
John Safford Fiske to Ernest Boulton Edinburgh, 136 George Street
My darling Ernie, À un ange qu'on nommé Ernie Boulton, Londres.
Office, Edinburgh
My darling Ernie,
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