Saving the Nation's Heritage

The UK is celebrating its annual Heritage Open Days this weekend. This is an occasion where historic sites who normally charge an entrance fee, or are in private ownership and not open to the public, open their doors free to all visitors.

Unfortunately, there are many sites that have long been demolished. An example of this is my own Nottinghamshire, Clumber House. This was the main country residence of the Dukes of Newcastle. Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, son of the 5th Duke, lived there for a time.

The 1930s in the UK saw a change in the fortunes of the landed gentry and aristocracy. Many men from these families had been killed in World War I and left estates with no-one to inherit them. Various death duties and inheritance taxes rose astronomically and people who inherited a stately home couldn’t afford to keep them. That’s what happened to Clumber. The Duke of Newcastle couldn’t afford to keep the house so he had it demolished in 1938. Fortunately, the chapel, stables, stately entrance gates and the longest lime tree avenue in Europe survive, as do the extensive grounds, and they form the present Clumber Park. My family spent many happy days out at Clumber Park when I was young, and my sister worked in the garden nursery for a few years. We are also fortunate in having lots of photographs of both the inside and outside of Clumber House, so it’s possible to create a scale model, as you see in the video below.

Many more stately homes were demolished in the early 20th century. Thankfully a lot have survived and most are in public ownership, either with the National Trust or English heritage, or belong to charitable trusts. Many people have had pivotal roles in the preservation of these buildings, and of many, more ordinary buildings. Here are two men from the lgbt community who are celebrated as saviours of our nation’s heritage.

First of all there is James Lees-Milne (1908-1997). He was an architectural historian who has been described by Hugh Montgomery Massingberd, a renowned historian and genealogist, as the man who “almost single-handedly saved what we now take for granted as the national heritage”.

James was himself a member of the landed gentry, the son of a self-made cotton baron who bought Wickfordham Manor in Worcestershire which James inherited in 1949. After graduating from Oxford with a history degree (and a string of gay lovers, including the young John Gielgud), James went to work as political campaigner for his relative Sir Oswald Mosley. During that time James met another lover, Harold Nicolson of Sissinghurst. It was Harold who was instrumental in getting James a job at the National Trust.

The National Trust was formed in 1895. Its main focus was on preserving open spaces and parkland. In 1936 they formed the Country Houses Committee which aimed to preserve buildings as well, and James Lees-Milne was appointed at is first secretary. With his family, social and sexual connections he got to visit many private stately homes. From the moment he took up his post James embarked on a mission to save as many building from demolition as possible. He was too late to save Clumber House. He hoped to persuade owners to donate their houses to the National Trust when they inherited them, free of any death duties.

There were successes and losses. He was unable to persuade the Marquess of Bath to donate Longleat House to the Trust, but years later the Marquess’s son opened the house to the public in 1949.

One of James’s successes was Cliveden House, which is now a National Trust hotel. Also, like a lot of other stately homes around the country, whether owned by the National Trust or not, Cliveden has been used as the setting for films and television dramas. My favourite use of Cliveden is in “Carry On, Don’t Lose Your Head”.

But heritage is more than stately homes. Even as James Lees-Milne has been credited with saving hundreds of stately homes from the bulldozer there are other people who were looking at urban and ordinary buildings. One of these men died just a few weeks ago and he has been credited with helping to save the urban landscape of Georgian London.

Colin Amery (1944-2018) was also an architectural historian. He held many appointments, including being an advisor to the Prince of Wales and Director of the World Monuments Fund in Britain. Colin’s career began with the Town and Country Planning Association, from which he progressed to being an editor of the “Architectural Review” and a prolific writer of ooks on architecture.

Activism was also one of Colin Amery’s fortes. During the 1960s and 1970s towns and cities across the UK were demolishing large areas of “old” buildings to make way for redevelopment and new concrete block buildings. Colin was appalled at the loss of many perfectly good pre-modern buildings. In London’s East End Colin joined other leading architectural historians in campaigning against redevelopment of the historic Spitalfields area.

Colin co-founded the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. In 1977 he joined a sit-in at two 18th-century weavers’ houses and saved them from demolition. In 1981 he joined another sit-in at a Flemish-style building in Spital Square. Other buildings were saved and Spitalfields is now seen having one of the most significant collection of Georgian houses in Greater London, saving the architectural past of the weaving industry for future generations.

Colin was also keen to renovate buildings for himself, which was the reason he appeared in a television series called “Location, Location, Location” in September 2012. The premise of the programme is to take a couple who wish to move house and take them round three other houses selected by the programme’s presenters. The couple then had to chose one to buy, or not, if they don’t like any of them.

Colin Amery and his partner Robin Balance had lived apart for a few years and decided to buy a new house together which they could live in and renovate. Colin and Robin didn’t feel any of the houses the programme’s presenters selected in Cuckfield, Surrey, were what they were looking for. Fortunately, they found another house themselves and moved in. They married in 2014.

Many more people have helped to maintain the UK’s heritage. Whether historians, landowners, members of the public donating to charity, or the Heritage Lottery Fund, there is so much around us that people regard as worthy of keeping. Sites important to the lgbt community are no exception. They have joined thousands of other sites to which the governments in the UK and USA have given special protected status. The Stonewall Inn in New York received protected status a few years ago, and so are a couple of historic gay pubs in London.

Even though the Heritage Open Days are free to the public let’s hope that a new generation, or even an older one, can see hidden parts of our heritage that are worth saving and which remind us all that the past is the only way we have got to the present.

Around the World in Another 80 Gays : Part 26) Singing Out of His Tree

Previously on 80 Gays : 53) Dame Carol Ann Duffy (b.1955) is the UK’s Poet Laureate, a title reminding us of the practice in Ancient Greece of awarding laurel wreaths to winners of song contests, as written about by 54) Theocritus of Syracuse (c.300 BC-c.260 BC), and the modern-day versions of such contests makes stars out of singers like 55) Clay Aiken (b.1978).

55) Clay Aiken was baptised Clayton Holmes Grissom. Clayton and Holmes are the names of his two grandmothers’ families. Aiken is his mother’s family name. Clay’s parents, Vernon Grissom and his second wife Nancy Faye Aiken, separated in the 1990s. When he was 19 Clay decided to legally change his surname from Grissom to Aiken.

One feature I noticed was the dominance of North Carolina in Clay’s ancestry. This is by no means unique. Other research shows dominance of other states in other people’s ancestries. Usually, however, there is a variety of geographical backgrounds in American ancestries, including some of those I’ve featured previously on this blog.

Below is a comparison. I’ve selected another famous “American Idol” contestant, Adam Lambert, whose paternal ancestry I have researched. The bottom row of each chart gives the singer’s name. Above that are rows representing the previous five generations. Each ancestor is given a colour to indicate a state of origin. The more colours, the more states appear in the ancestry. Ancestors I haven’t yet researched are blank. 

The first thing to notice is blue in Clay Aiken’s ancestry table. This represents North Carolina. Adam Lambert’s ancestry, even if less research has been done, shows more variation, though the blue representing North Carolina appears in his chart also.

Clay Aiken’s immediate ancestry reveals his musical heritage. His autobiography “Learning to Sing” relates his great-grandfather and great-great-uncle were talented musicians who were recorded by Duke University as part of a folk culture project. Another musical connection appears in one of Clay’s distance cousins Lynn Breedlove (b.1965). Lynn, also Lynnee, was founder and lead singer of the queer punk band Tribe 8.

The Breedloves and the Grissoms reveal a dark chapter found in many American ancestries, the American Civil War. Both families fought for the Confederates.

In 1861 the Confederates formed an infantry regiment that was later nicknamed the Granville Targeteers because it was largely composed of men from Granville County, North Carolina. Along with other families in Clay’s ancestry the Breedloves and Grissoms had lived in Granville County for several generations. There’s no indication that any of Clay’s direct ancestors enlisted with the Confederates although his ancestors’ brother and cousins did. No less than five Breedlove brothers, nephews of Clay’s ancestor Shelton Breedlove, enlisted in the army or navy.

Also serving in the Granville Targeteers was Alexander Grissom, the brother of Clay’s great-great-grandfather. Alexander rose to the rank of 1st Corporal in 1862 and was killed on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Through another Granville County family, the Bennetts, it looks probable that one of Clay’s ancestral uncles was Richard Bennett, Governor of Virginia 1652-5. Governor Bennett was an ancestor of Robert E. Lee.

Yet another Granville County family caught my attention because they are my ancestors as well, the Spiveys. Clay descends from Littleton Spivey (c.1700-1761). My connection comes in the 17th century when Clay’s Spivey ancestors migrated to America from Nottinghamshire. That’s where my Spivey ancestors came from and I’ve been digging in the county archives to find out if we’re related.

Among Clay’s other colonial ancestors are several families who were involved in one of the earliest colonial rebellions, Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. Its causes and effects are complex and too lengthy to go into here, but ultimately it led to the growth of the persecution of Native Americans, the American slave trade, white supremacy in US politics, and the American Dream. A brief description of the rebellion is given in this video.

Among Clay’s ancestors known to have been involved in the rebellion are George Proctor, a Tidewater aristocrat who supported the rebellion, and William Rowland, one of the rebels.

That’s just a snapshot of Clay Aiken’s ancestry. Let’s jump forward to look at Clay’s rise to fame.

Having been a singer and musician in public from childhood Clay got the chance to record a demo album thanks to a birthday present from his mother. After the first series of “American Idol” proved to be a success Clay was persuaded to audition for the second series in 2002. He surprised the judges with his talent and the rest, as they say, is history. Even though he lost to Ruben Studdard in the final Clay was a popular contestant. Along with many other contestants he recorded “American Idol Season 2: All-time Classic American Love Songs”. A solo album followed.

The “American Idol” album was recorded in the Larrabee West recording studio in West Hollywood. Larrabee West wasn’t built or designed as a recording studio. It was built in 1922 as a bank. But it’s what happened after it was a recording studio which takes us further on our “80 Gays” journey. In 2007 the Larrabee West studio was turned into a gay nightclub and restaurant called Eleven. Its co-owner was 56) Richard Grossi.

Next time : We go clubbing and pull a few strings in order to continue on a musical journey via the Gay Games.

Queer Cryptids

As we approach the end of the Pride season have you noticed how many unicorns you’ve seen? Unicorns seem to be everywhere. Amongst my other interests I’m a cryptozoologist and understand why members of the lgbt community feel some affinity with such fabulous creatures. After all, some people claim we don’t exist.

A cryptozoologist is someone who studies fabulous beasts, mythical creatures and strange animals. Yes, we’re talking about Yeti, Nessie and fairies. Until very recently I wasn’t really aware of any other lgbt cryptozoologist. The more open lgbt cryptozoologists on the internet seem to be of a younger generation than myself. Gay Star News published a feature on the current fascination for unicorns and the people who look for weird creatures and cryptids.

Cryptid is the all-encompassing name for these creatures. The words cryptid and cryptozoology indicate their mysterious nature. Their apparent strangeness and “otherness” has been mirrored over many centuries in the attitudes of society with regard to homosexuality and gender identity. They are seen as being outside conformity and the normal understanding of the world, just like many members of the lgbt community feel.

Included by many cryptozoologists, myself one of them, are heraldic beasts, my specialist area. Many of these beasts are common to myths and legends – the unicorn, griffin, mermaid, etc. Some heraldic beasts are very real. The female pelican, for example, had the legendary trait of pecking at her chest so her chicks could feed on her blood. This blood-letting is shown often in heraldry and I’ve illustrated it a couple of years ago in the coats of arms of two lgbt people, Julia Pell and Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton.

In the 1990s I designed and sold badges which featured heraldic beasts (below). In view of the growing popularity of cryptids in the lgbt community, not to mention the world of Harry Potter and his Fabulous Beasts, I may redesign them and start selling them again (they've all been copyrighted to myself, by the way, and I do not give permission for them to be reproduced).

I adopted one heraldic beast as a personal mascot, a rare beast called an alphyn (seen on the bottom row of badge designs). I chose it because its name is similar to that of my grandmother’s family, who spelt their name Alphey in Tudor times. Just like the pelican of the Pelham and Pell families, people and places adopting beasts with similar names is common in heraldry. The London borough of Enfield shows the heraldic beast called the enfield on most of the street signs.

As well as the composite animal cryptids like the unicorn, griffin and alphyn, who are made up of body parts from different animals, there are also the humanoid cryptids. The most well-known of these is the mermaid. Today the term mermaid has been used to describe many water spirits and creatures. Sirens, tritons, naiads and many others have been depicted as half-human and half-fish, personified in recent popular culture by Ariel from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”. There’s so much to say about mermaids and the lgbt community that I’m going to leave them for separate article next month entitled “My Ancestor was a Mermaid”.

All through history people have been catching glimpses of strange, unknown creatures. Legends and stories have developed around them, trying to explain their origin. Remote locations have always been ripe for sightings of cryptids.

In ancient Greece many myths and legends were told about strange creatures and societies living near the edges or dark places of their world. Medusa, the Harpies and the Cyclops are still familiar cryptids. One of the lesser know cryptids is a race of being called the Makhlyes. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing 2,500 years ago, described this race of north African humanoids as being sexually divided down the middle of their bodies, one side being male and other female.

Medieval explorers wrote down what unfamiliar creatures they saw and medieval writers collected all those stories together into books called bestiaries. Familiar creatures, like the pelican, were included. Another creature that is familiar to us today but rarely seen by the majority of Europeans at the time was a creature called the cameleopard. It was a cross between a camel and a leopard. Today we call it a giraffe.

Perhaps, one day, we’ll discover the reality behind some cryptids. Perhaps we’ll find the real Nessie and discover if it really is a plesiosaur. Or perhaps we’ll find out if Bigfoot and Yeti are the same species.

Theories about Bigfoot have been very popular and lots of books have been written about it. Michael Grumley (1942-1988), was a gay writer who, with his partner Robert Ferro and their friends, formed an informal group known as the Violet Quill. Members of this group were responsible for the renaissance of gay literature after the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

In “There Are Giants in the Earth” published in 1974 Michael Grumley suggested that Bigfoot and similar humanoid cryptids are the last remaining members of a species of giant which once populated Earth. They now are very few in number and live in isolated caves and underground tunnels.

As my interest in cryptozoology has been rekindled in the past few weeks I wonder if there are any more cryptids that will become lgbt icons and mascots. In the USA the legendary Mothman and the less well-known Flatwoods Monster have been adopted by some lgbt people.

With so many genders and sexual identities being recognised and brought into the open perhaps there’s room for everyone to have their own personal cryptid mascot.

Homohoax : Forging Threesome

“Fake or Fortune” and “Britain’s Lost Masterpieces” are two UK television programmes in which art experts and art detectives investigate the origin of paintings. These paintings may be in a well-known art gallery or a private home, but the paintings featured in both series have either been labelled as forgeries or of questionable origin. Some paintings have been revealed as fakes or unproven to be genuine but some have been confirmed as original works by major artists. It’s the sort of detective work that uncovered the real identity of a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie I wrote about last month. Another recent success was the confirmation that a portrait of the Duke of Buckingham, the lover of King James I, was a genuine Rubens.

History is littered with art forgeries, including the one by Michelangelo which was the subject of my first Homohoax article. One of the biggest forgery scandals of the 20th century was one which involved three gay men during the 1950s and 1960s. Even the life story of one of them was a fake.

Elmyr de Hory was born into an aristocratic family who had estates dotted around the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was an ambassador and his mother came from a distinguished family of bankers. Both of his parents were killed during World War II and Elmyr fell on hard times. To survive he began to sell of his family’s art collection.

Everything in the previous paragraph is a lie (except falling on hard times). It is what the man himself told his biographer, Clifford Irving, in 1969. It is only in the past decade that researchers have uncovered the true facts of his personal background.

Elmyr’s real name was Elemér Albert Hoffmann. He was born in Budapest in 1906. His father was recorded as a “wholesaler of hand-made goods” and his mother was what we used to refer to as a housewife. His parents didn’t die in the war but survived and divorced.

Elmyr, the name by which he is usually known, studied art from the age of 16. He soon discovered he had a talent for forgery and in the late 1920s he was arrested for cheque fraud and counterfeiting documents. He also discovered that he had a talent for copying the styles of famous painters and in 1946 he sold a drawing to an English aristocrat who was told it was by Picasso. It wasn’t. It was by Elmyr. It was also around this time that he developed the persona of an impoverished baron forced to sell his art collection, rather than the impoverished artist that he really was.

After going into partnership with an art dealer who took the biggest cut of his profits Elmyr decided to leave Europe and eventually moved to the USA where he lived for the next twelve years. He was doing well until 1955 when a Chicago art dealer discovered that some of the paintings he bought from Elmyr were forgeries and pressed charges against him.

For the few years afterwards Elmyr painted original works. His reputation as a forger had come to the attention of the FBI because of the Chicago affair but he found a steady income hard to some by and returned to forgery. He found another art dealer to partner with, but like the first it didn’t work out and Elmyr got so depressed that he attempted suicide.

It was during his convalescence in New York that Elmyr met Fernand Legros (1931-1983). Fernand was born in Egypt and moved to France after World War II. He married an American woman in order to gain US citizenship and promptly left her in Paris and moved to New York.

Elmyr decided to move down to Florida and took Fernand with him. Apparently, it was on the drive down to Miami that Fernand persuaded Elmyr to become his dealer. Even though Fernand was claiming to take only 40% the profits he was actually taking more without telling Elmyr the real price his painting fetched.

On one of their journeys around the USA the pair met French Canadian Réal Lessard (b.1939). Fernand fell in love with him and together they continued to fleece Elmyr out of his cut of the profits. They also helped to validate Elmyr’s fake paintings by forging documents and art catalogues. They were even able to bribe some less than honest art experts to claim that Elmyr’s forgeries were genuine.

Once more disappointed by the loss of earnings that was being withheld from him Elmyr decided to move back to Europe. He broke off his business partnership with Fernand for a while but was persuaded to take him back. Fernand bought him a villa on Ibiza where he continued to produce paintings for which he received $400 a month while Fernand and Réal were selling them for thousands.

In 1966 the three fraudsters were uncovered. A Texas oil magnate had accumulated 56 of Elmyr’s paintings. For a couple of years Elmyr’s work wasn’t up to its usual standard and his paintings were becoming recognisable as fakes. The Texan prosecuted the threesome. Fernand and Réal were arrested at the Ibiza villa and convicted of fraud, while Elmyr went on the run.

Eventually Elmyr gave himself up and was put on trial in Spain. Because there was no evidence that any of the revealed forgeries were painted on Spanish soil (Ibiza) he couldn’t be charged with forgery. Instead Elmyr was charged and convicted of homosexuality (illegal in Spain at the time) and of consorting with criminals (i.e. the convicted Fernand and Réal). He was sentenced to two months in prison.

The publicity surrounding the trials of all three turned Elmyr into something of a celebrity. Clifford Irving wrote his biography, he was interviewed in the media and newspapers, and the illustrious Orson Welles made a documentary about him. The new found fame was a shot in the arm for Elmyr and he began to produce original works again and opened his own gallery on Ibiza.

In the background, however, was the spectre of fraud charges in France. It took several years for France and Spain to agree on extradition terms and it looked like Elmyr would be forced to stand trial in France. As soon as his live-in companion, Mark Forgy, told Elmyr that extradition had been authorised Elmyr went to his room and took an overdose of pills and alcohol. Mark rushed him to hospital, but Elmyr died in his arms on the way.

Elmyr’s celebrity status in popular culture is sustained by the mysteries waiting to be verified about his real life. His reputation in the art world is less welcome. There are still some of his forgeries hanging on the walls of galleries and the rooms of the rich and famous.

Today Mark Forgy, Elmyr’s sole heir, is the owner of several hundred of Elmyr’s paintings, all of them forgeries of old masters and famous artists. Usually, when forgeries are revealed they are destroyed, but Mark’s collection forms a unique record of one of the biggest art scandals in history.