The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People

by David Wallechinsky

  The Utopian Oneida community. John Humphrey Noyes standing in forefront

  SEX LIFE: “The Honorable John,” as Noyes was called by his many grandchildren, was not always filled with honorable intentions. As Father of the Community, he used his position to get whatever he wanted and whomever he wanted.

  In an imperfect world, reasoned Noyes, one had to be practical. That was the justification he gave for marrying homely Harriet Holton, a wealthy heiress who had been sending him regular contributions. Though he felt “no particular love of the sentimental kind” for her, and despite the fact that just a year before their marriage he had spoken out against monogamy, he married her in order to stifle rumors of his promiscuity. The marriage was a disappointment. Harriet gave birth to four stillborn babies and only one live child during their first six years of matrimony. Unable to tolerate imperfection, Noyes found a solution in self-control during sex, coitus reservatus, or as he called it, “male continence.” It was essentially sexual intercourse without ejaculation. Noyes claimed that male continence was easy and that his wife’s experience was “very satisfactory, as it had never been before.” Apparently Harriet was able to have orgasms with this method. About this time Noyes felt an “increase of brotherly love” for a female disciple named Mary Cragin. At the same time, Harriet fell in love with Mary’s husband, George. When Noyes realized this, armed as he was with his “greatest discovery” of male continence, he decided it was time to begin his ideal society. Thus, in 1846, “complex marriage” was born. A year later, charged with adultery, Noyes fled from Vermont to New York, where he established the Oneida Community.

  By 1850 complex marriage was in full swing at Oneida. “Abound,” Noyes told members in 1869 (before that members tried not to have children). The female orgasm was a desired consequence of every sexual encounter, because the more love one gave, the closer to God one became. In theory, each woman was free to refuse any man’s advances—including those of her husband. But in actuality, women submitted to prominent members of the community out of fear of being criticized as selfish. Emotional attachments, even of a mother to her child, were considered selfish and sinful. After all, those personal feelings would undermine communal spirit. Once Noyes told a man who was devoted to a particular lady, “You do not love her, you love happiness.”

  Promiscuity was rigorously enforced; violators were banished from the community or demoted in their work. To prevent unwanted pregnancies, young men were taught the art of self-control by older women, who were usually past menopause. Noyes appointed himself responsible for initiating women into the sexual experience.

  SEX PARTNERS: Practicing what he preached, Noyes took hundreds of lovers during his lifetime. His strong sex drive lasted well into his 60s, when he sired at least 9 of the 58 children born under the community’s selective breeding experiment. All the women, perhaps attracted more by his power than his looks, were eager to sleep with their spiritual leader. However, Noyes took particular delight in acting as “first husband” to the virgins—some as young as 10 years old, who had not even begun to menstruate. This practice got him into trouble in 1877 when jealous males, angry over his attempted monopoly on young girls, threatened to bring charges of statutory rape against him. With religious leaders also demanding action against the “ethics of the barnyard,” Noyes fled to Canada. Resettling at Niagara Falls, he died there at the age of 74, surrounded by his faithful wife, sisters, and a small group of followers.

  HIS THOUGHTS: “There is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law, than why eating or drinking should be—and there is as little occasion for shame in the one case as in the other.”

  “It is as foolish and cruel to expend one’s seed on a wife merely for the sake of getting rid of it, as it would be to fire a gun at one’s best friend merely for the sake of unloading it.”

  —S.L.W.

  Arctic Explorer

  ROBERT PEARY (May 6, 1856-Feb. 20, 1920)

  HIS FAME: The expedition officially credited with being the first to reach the North Pole—on Apr. 6, 1909—was led by explorer Robert Edwin Peary. Peary was also the first to offer conclusive evidence that Greenland was an island.

  HIS PERSON: Born in Cresson, Pa., Robert was not quite three years old when his father died. Mary Wiley Peary moved her only child to a small town near Portland, Me. Peary’s pampered childhood was less than pleasant—his mother dressed him in girlish clothes, including a bonnet to protect his fair skin—and few boys his age would play with what they called “a sissy.”

  When Peary entered Bowdoin College, he was a tall and athletic man who was accepted by his peers, yet he lacked pleasing character traits. Later he was considered ruthless and driven, and he was often jealous of rival explorers. His dedication to his work was obsessive. Over the years, he uncomplainingly lost eight toes to frostbite. He was motivated by his own proclamation: “I don’t want to live and die without accomplishing anything or without being known beyond a narrow circle of friends.”

  In 1886 he conducted his first exploration of the Far North and decided to make Arctic research his lifework. Teaming up with a black assistant named Matthew Henson—and often accompanied by his wife, Josephine—Peary spent the next 23 years traveling through the polar region and at times living among the Eskimos.

  Peary’s disposition made him hard to live with. Matthew Henson particularly felt the brunt of Peary’s personality and prejudices. Although Henson was intensely loyal, Peary called him “my colored boy” and a “dark-skinned, kinky-haired child of the Equator” and doubted that a Negro could survive in the cold climates of the North. Nevertheless, it was Henson who was alongside Peary on Apr. 6, 1909, when, despite the unbearable cold and hunger, the two men, four Eskimos, and their dogs reached latitude 90°—the North Pole.

  Or did they reach it? No sooner had Peary returned to civilization than he discovered that a former associate, Dr. Frederick Cook, claimed he himself had reached the pole a year earlier. A bitter public fight ensued, during which Peary’s character and his ability as a geographer were both questioned. However, by 1911 Peary, who had been financed by the National Geographic Society and the U.S. Congress, had secured his place in history as the first man to reach the coveted goal.

  Peary’s Eskimo mistress, Allakasingwah

  LOVE LIFE: On the surface, Peary had a rather conventional love life. Over-protected by his mother, he gravitated toward motherly, traditional women.

  His first sweetheart was Mary “May” Kilby, a fellow student at Portland High School. When he graduated from college in 1877, he became a surveyor in Fryeburg, Me., where May visited him. Subsequently they became engaged. But Peary would not control his wanderlust, and toward the end of 1879 he asked May to “release” him. She broke the engagement, and he wrote in his diary, “The past is dead. Vive la future! ”

  On Aug. 11, 1888, he married Josephine Diebitsch of Washington, D.C., who announced that she planned to accompany her new husband on his trips to Greenland. Others may have raised eyebrows, but Peary was delighted; he had a strong sense of home and hearth and liked the fact that wherever he was to go, Josephine would be there to make a home for him. She became the first white woman to winter with an Arctic expedition. In 1893 their daughter, Marie Ahnighito, was born in Greenland, farther north than any white child had been born up to that time.

  Mrs. Peary wrote in her diary about the horrors of Eskimo life, stating that Eskimos weren’t clean and—even more upsetting—that they practiced wife swapping, of which she would have no part.

  However, Peary adapted quite readily to the native customs, calling the Eskimos “my dusky children of the Pole.” In 1894, while Josephine was away, he began an affair with a 14-year-old Etah Eskimo girl named Allakasingwah, or familiarly to him, “Ally.” Out of their passionate lovemaking they had at least one child, a son named Kahdi. Peary photographed his Eskimo mistress topless for his “scientific” memoirs, called her his “café-au-lait hostess,” and said that th
e “buxom and oleaginous” Ally belonged to “a race of naive children of nature, who are hampered by no feelings of false modesty or bashfulness in expressing their tender feelings.”

  While living with the Eskimos, Peary no doubt took advantage of the native custom which allowed a visiting adult male to sleep with the wife of his host.

  Josephine knew of his philandering but swallowed her pride in a letter to her husband. “Come home,” she wrote, “and let Marie and I love you and nurse you. Don’t let your pride keep you back. Who will ever remember it [his infidelity] 10 years from now? … Oh, Bert, Bert. I want you too much.”

  When he returned to the U.S., Peary’s mistress and son were left behind, their whereabouts unknown. Cook used the affair with Ally against Peary. During the media battle between the two explorers, Cook produced the topless photograph of Ally holding a child and added a caption: “Polar Tragedy—a Deserted Child of the Sultan of the North and Its Mother.”

  Peary, Josephine, and their children—Marie and Robert, Jr.—moved to Washington, D.C., where Peary retired from the navy with the rank of rear admiral. In his last days he was a strict father and devoted husband. Peary died of pernicious anemia in February, 1920.

  —A.L. G.

  The Adulterous Diarist

  SAMUEL PEPYS (Feb. 23, 1633-May 26, 1703)

  HIS FAME: As England’s first secretary of the Admiralty, Pepys doubled the size of the English navy and greatly increased its efficiency, establishing a tradition of order and discipline that allowed Britannia to rule the waves in the century that followed. However, what immortalized Samuel Pepys was the 1,250,000-word diary he kept from 1660 to 1669. In it he described in vivid detail the coming and going of the plague and the great fire of London.

  HIS PERSON: Despite his humble origins, Pepys’ intelligence and diligence allowed him to move up in society until, under King James II, he was one of the most powerful men in England. At the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Marchant de Saint-Michel, a poor and beautiful 15-year-old, Pepys was employed as a factotum, or general servant, for his cousin Adm. Edward Montagu (later the Earl of Sandwich). After serving as a clerk and secretary, Pepys began his rise in the naval bureaucracy, later becoming a trusted confidant of King Charles II and King James II. By 1678 Pepys’ attacks on corruption had made him many enemies, some of whom were powerful enough to have him thrown into the Tower of London, charged with treason and popery. However, he survived these attacks, and during the reign of King James II, Pepys controlled a larger budget than that of any other department of state. He lived out a peaceful retirement, enjoying friendships with John Dryden, Sir Christopher Wren, and Sir Isaac Newton.

  Pepys at 33

  Pepys’ diary, kept between the ages of 26 and 36, is extraordinary not only for its descriptions of great historical events, but for its revelation of a very human human. The reader suffers along with Pepys in his bouts with constipation and jealousy, feels his pride at acquiring a new pocket watch or periwig, and empathizes with his struggles with his barely controllable sex drive. He kept the diary under lock and key and protected himself further by writing in shorthand. Certain passages, particularly those dealing with his erotic affairs, were further disguised by the scattered use of words from Spanish, French, Dutch, Greek, Italian, and Latin. For example, on June 3, 1666, Pepys noted: “… and so to Mrs. Martin and there did what je voudrais avec her, both devante and backward, which is also muy bon plazer.” On Nov. 28 of the same year: “… and Pegg with me in my closet a good while, and did suffer me a la besar mucho et tocar ses cosas upon her breast—wherein I had great pleasure.”

  The diary was first published in 1825, but even the 10-volume Wheatley edition of 1893-1899 left out 90 passages that dealt too explicitly with sex and defecation. It was not until the 1970s that these sections were finally made public, over 300 years after they were written.

  SEX LIFE: Samuel Pepys had been married four years when he began his diary. The young Mrs. Pepys, petty and annoying as she might sometimes appear, endured quite a lot of pettiness herself. On Dec. 19, 1661, Pepys called her a “whore” because her ribbons didn’t match. On Jan. 9, 1663, he tore up all the letters he had written to her. On Apr. 5, 1664, he became so angry with her that he pulled her nose, and on Dec. 19, 1665, he punched her in the eye. On July 12, 1667, he pulled her nose again. Nonetheless, he always felt guilty after these outbursts. On Oct. 23, 1662, after sporting together in bed, Pepys described Elizabeth and himself as “a very happy couple.”

  However, 1663 was to change their relationship. Elizabeth persistently complained because her husband made her stay at home and deprived her of the pleasures of London. Finally Pepys broke down and allowed her to take dancing lessons from a married instructor named Pembleton. It wasn’t long before Pepys was outrageously jealous. On May 15 he checked to make sure his wife was wearing drawers. On May 24 he noticed Pembleton leering at her during church services. Two days later he hurried home during the afternoon. Finding his wife and Pembleton alone, he sneaked upstairs to see if any of the beds had been used. (They hadn’t.) Meanwhile, Elizabeth was becoming jealous of Samuel’s growing closeness with her maid, Ashwell. Pepys solved the problem in mid-June by sending his wife and Ashwell to the country for two months.

  Previously Pepys had engaged in minor extramarital flirtations, but nothing serious. For example, on Feb. 6, 1660, he had “a very high bout” with Mistress Ann. “I rattled her up.” And on Aug. 12 of that year, he wrote of shop-girl Betty Lane, “I was exceeding free in dallying with her and she not unfree to take it.”

  But in 1663, with his wife out of town, he met again with Betty Lane and their affair shifted gears. July 18: “I had my full liberty of towzing her and doing what I would. Of which I am heartily ashamed, but I do resolve never to do so more.” However, on Sept. 24, with his wife back in London, he returned to Betty Lane and “did what I would with her, but only the main thing.” Again he felt guilty and resolved “never to do the like again.”

  On Jan. 16, 1664, he “did what I would” with Betty Lane once again and wrote, “I hope it will be the last occasion of my life.” It wasn’t. While his wife was in the country again, Pepys learned that Betty Lane had married and was now Mrs. Martin. His reaction? “I must have a bout with her very shortly to see how she finds marriage.” Three days later, being in “an idle and wanton humor,” he had his bout and scored twice in an hour.

  By this time Pepys was ready to branch out. Attracted to “Bagwell’s Wife,” he seduced her in small steps for a year until, on Nov. 15, 1664, he was able to boast to his diary, “after many protestings by degrees I did arrive at what I would, with great pleasure.” And a month later (the day after he punched his wife in the eye): “I tried to do what I would and against her will I did enough for my contentment.” Eventually he broke down Mrs. Bagwell’s resistance completely, but not before he had injured his left forefinger in a struggle with her on Feb. 20, 1665.

  For the next three years Pepys kissed and played with the breasts of many women, most, but not all of them, of the lower classes. However, he “did what he would” with only a handful, one of whom was Doll Lane, Betty’s sister, with whom he first became involved in 1666 while Betty was pregnant. On Oct. 21, he did what he would with her “and might have done anything else.”

  All this time Elizabeth Pepys was unaware of her husband’s infidelities, although she was jealous of his friendships with certain women and angry at the rumors that he partied and made merry in her absence. But in October of 1668, Pepys’ extramarital bubble burst, and all because of his involvement with a girl he never even did what he would with. Deborah Willet came to work for the Pepyses on Sept. 30, 1667. She was a pretty young virgin whose breasts were just beginning to grow. By Dec. 22 Pepys had kissed her for the first time, and by the following August he was touching her “with great pleasure.” Then came Oct. 25, 1668: “… and after supper, to have my head combed by Deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this wor
ld; for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed, I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girl also.” Not knowing how much his wife had seen, Pepys admitted nothing, but that night Elizabeth became so upset that she admitted for the first time that she was a Roman Catholic.

  The Pepys household continued in a state of extreme tension for two weeks, with Elizabeth watching her husband’s every move and making sure that he didn’t so much as smile at Deborah Willet. On Nov. 9 he managed to fling a note to Deborah telling her that he had denied ever having kissed her and advising her to do the same. However, the next day, when he returned home from the office for lunch, Pepys found his wife “mightily troubled again, more than ever, and she tells me that it is from her examining the girl and getting a confession now from her of all, even to the very tocando su thing with my hand—.”

  Understandably outraged by her husband’s infidelity and lying, Elizabeth forced Pepys to fire Deborah Willet. But the night before she left, he confessed to his diary, “The truth is, I have a great mind for to have the maidenhead of this girl, which I should no doubt to have if yo could get time para be con her—but she will be gone and I know not whither.” However, he also noted the next day that he had made love to his wife “more times since this falling-out than in I believe 12 months before—and with more pleasure to her than I think in all the time of our marriage before.”