This grandiose pile is a pleasantly depressing monument to death,
or, more precisely, to our ancestors' sometimes ludicrous grasps
for immortality by means of the most delightfully ostentatious
tombs. I have always considered its funerary sculpture to be a
perfect example of high camp, and in any case it is moderately
diverting to find out where lie the mortal remains of our gay
forbears.
The bones of gay dramatist Francis Beaumont
(1584-1616) — who lived with his lover John
Fletcher on the Bankside in Southwark — lie near
the tomb of Dryden. The latest gay poet to be honoured in the
Poets' Corner is W.H. Auden (1907-1973), and in
the musical section there is a stone honouring the composer
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976).
If we make our solemn way thence to the Great Nave, we will come
upon the effigy of one of the gayest of monarchs, King
James I (1566-1625), whose tomb was lost and not
rediscovered until 1869. On His Majesty's left is the magnificent
tomb of his lover George Villiers, 1st Duke of
Buckingham (1592-1628). (On his right is the tomb
(with huge bronze figures representing Hope, Truth, Charity and
Faith) of Ludovic Stuart, Duke of
Richmond and Lennox (1574-1624), son of one of his earliest lovers, Esme Stuart.)
It is not always easy to get into the Abbey. Robert
Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822), who had gone
insane and cut his throat after homosexual blackmail, finally was
buried near the North Entrance to the North Transept, but at his
funeral mourners had to fight their way through a rioting mob.
The Queer Mystery of the Abbey is the whereabouts of the remains
of Samuel Foote (1720-1777), the Restoration
dramatist who was once as popular — and as witty — as
Oscar Wilde, and whose reputation, like Wilde's was blasted by
homosexual scandal. But his staunch admirers, determined to claim
for him a respectable niche in the Abbey, buried him by
torchlight in an unmarked grave somewhere along the North Walk
of the Cloisters — tread softly!
Other probable gay men memorialized herein include Charles George
Gordon or "Chinese Gordon" (1833-1885) —
a bronze bust in the Belfry Tower; Prime Minister William
Pitt (1759-1806) — a monument over the west door
of the Nave; and Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) of
Rhodes Scholarships fame — South Aisle. A fair number of the
monks and abbots entombed in the building they loved best were
no doubt gay, though the proof be buried with them. And of course
there is an honourable gay share among those grey marble slabs
which pay homage, for example, to "all those who served the
Crown in the Colonial Territories."
On St Valentine's Day, 1995, a memorial stained-glass window in
Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, was unveiled to the memory of
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), one hundred years to
the day after the opening night of his play The Importance
of Being Earnest. He is but one in a long line of queers who
have been commemorated in this famous London landmark.
A modest stone in the Poets' Corner in the South Transept, for
example, commemorates Lord Byron (1788-1824),
great romantic poet, author of Don Juan, and
indefatigable lover of diverse Greek youths. The Poets' Corner also boasts a handsome medallion for the
(suppressed?) gay poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771),
with a tasteful epitaph composed by his friend William Mason. And
— but of course — a monument to the immortal
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), a striking
structure which the gay aniquary Horace Walpole
aptly termed "preposterous" when it was erected by
subscription in 1740.
Other gay or bisexual notables interred in Westminster Abbey
include King William III (1650-1702), buried in
great simplicity in the South Aisle of the Chapel of Henry VI,
and his boyfriend William Bentinck (1649-1709),
buried in a vault nearby; and King Richard II
(1367-1400), whose tomb in the Ambulatory used to be partly open
until a Westminster schoolboy stole his jawbone in 1776 (it was
returned in 1906).
Mortality, behold and fear
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how e'en the gayest bones
Sleep within these heaps of stones.
Copyright © Rictor Norton. All rights reserved.
Reproduction for sale or profit prohibited. This essay may not be
archived, republished or redistributed without the permission of the
author.
CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following form of citation:
Rictor Norton, "The Gay Guide to Westminster Abbey",
Gay History and Literature, updated 9 January 2012 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/westmin.htm>.
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