The Sinner's Grand Tour

by Tony Perrottet

  A century ago, this had been the home of another of Capri’s disreputable expats, a gay French opium addict and occasional poet named Baron Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen, who traced his lineage back to Marie-Antoinette’s lover, Axel von Fersen. In 1905, his marriage prospects and diplomatic career destroyed by a scandal in Paris (little is known, except that it involved a group of schoolboys), Baron Fersen moved to this secluded grove with his dapper Italian lover, Nino Cesarino, and threw caution to the winds. He chose this spot because it was just below Tiberius’s villa, and he built a Moorish-style den in the basement, so that aesthetes in velvet jackets and hair hanging over one eye could lounge around over hookahs and discuss poetry with guests like André Gide. One day Fersen was found dead there, having ingested a lethal amount of cocaine and champagne.

  This evening, while the cultured Capreses sat on the steps listening to a lecture (“Dionysius and Cinema”), we explored the art exhibition, black-and-white photographs by two of Fersen’s companions on Capri, all of naked Italian boys in classical poses. A German, Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden, who lived in Taormina in Sicily, and his cousin, Wilhelm von Plüschow, based in Naples, had pioneered erotic “art photography” in the 1890s. They chose as their models young village men, no matter how plain, provided they were well-endowed, and had them pose with classical props like laurel wreaths and statue fragments, stifling any suspicion from the boys’ families by paying handsome royalties. The kitschy images evoked an ancient sexual fantasia and were hugely popular in underground gay circles in Europe, collected by princes and heads of state. When in Capri, the two photographers stayed with Fersen, while his mate Nino modeled.

  The festival’s organizer, Ausilia Esposito, a raven-haired woman in a togalike dress and heavy gold jewelry, told me that an even more evocative homage to the Gods would be held at sunrise the next morning. I just had to find the Grotto of Matermania, a cliffside pagan shrine that could only be reached after a half-hour hike in the dark.

  “Don’t be late,” she warned. “The music starts at six a.m. sharp!”

  “You might want to go to that one by yourself,” Les said.

  At five thirty a.m., when I groggily arrived in Capri Town, the tuxedoed waiters were just closing down the swank cafés, and the last rich club kids were spilling out of the Bye Bye Baby disco. Trying to find the right route, I met an elderly couple dressed as if they were going to the opera; sure enough, they were bound for the dawn concert. Soon we were using our flashlights to proceed along a cobbled path through the moonlit groves.

  The couple, Franco and Mariella Pisa, divided their time between Naples and Capri, much as their parents and grandparents had done. “We always try to support the arts,” Signora Pisa said as she hobbled along on high heels. “No matter how strange.”

  After descending a stone staircase down the pitch-black cliff face, we arrived in the candlelit Grotto of Matermania. The cavern was half open to the night sky, the remains of the shrine still embedded in the wall. In antiquity, it was adorned with colored stones, artificial pools, and seashells. As shadows danced on the cave walls, other formally dressed Italians emerged from the night, one sequined diva holding a tiny white puppy. They all genteelly found rocks to sit on, until the numbers swelled to about sixty. As the starlit sky began to turn crimson, a tinkle of bells sounded and a lone musician segued into a discordant piece on a cello, inspired by research on ancient music.

  I began to see that the cave gaped over a jagged coastline. Hundreds of birds in the surrounding trees began to respond to the dawn and the music. To the side, a team of women had laid out yoga mats and were now in Salutation to the Sun.

  The sunrise from the Grotto di Matermania, site of pagan rites for over 2000 years.

  The audience was then offered the Dionysian repast—fresh grapes, bread, and milk. “Where’s the espresso machine?” muttered Signor Pisa, sotto voce.

  But the continuity with the ancient world was even more direct than I’d guessed. The organizer, Signora Esposita, excitedly told me that this very same grotto was used by Capri’s artists for pagan recreations a century ago, fueled not by milk but wine and drugs. In 1911, the intrepid Baron Fersen decided to simulate a human sacrifice to the sun god Mithra here. Fersen dressed himself as the Emperor Tiberius and Nino as the sacrificial offering, while friends in Roman tunics held incense burners and sang hymns. Nino was stripped naked and bound, then Fersen pretended to plunge a dagger into his chest, which apparently did give him a slight cut. Unfortunately, the scene was witnessed by a young shepherdess, who ran in horror to the local priest. Fersen was forced to leave the island for a period—one of the few cases on record of the Capreses being outraged by anything.

  The next morning, I went upstairs to contemplate the view, and lo and behold, the hundreds of yachts had vanished. There was only a single boat, a vintage three-masted schooner, in the harbor. It was as if the summer vacationers had disappeared overnight. One step outside proved it was true. “The season is over,” smiled a George Clooney-esque taxi driver as we cruised along in his white convertible. “I’m happy, everyone is happy.” The waiters were no longer pushy, the beaches weren’t crowded, the bus drivers didn’t sit on their horns.

  We could also go wherever we wanted, unimpeded—even the Blue Grotto, today the biggest symbol of Capri’s crass overdevelopment. I had heard rumors that if you went there just before dusk, you could swim inside the cave unobstructed by the boatmen who normally ferry tourists in and out. So I climbed with Henry down the cliff side and, ignoring a warning sign in five languages, we threw ourselves into the waves, much as August Kopisch had done in 1826. A chain is now embedded in the entrance of the grotto allowing you to pull yourself safely inside, without being brained by the rise and fall of the ocean swell. There beneath our feet, the water glowed that famous sapphire blue, which the Italian author Raffaela LaCapria describes as “more blue than any other blue, blue below and blue above and blue along each curve of its vault.”

  On our last weekend in Europe, I realized I no longer had any relics to chase or mad rituals to attend. Instead, I found myself chatting to locals on the beach in the Marina Piccola. I discovered it was possible to rent antique wooden motor-boats by the day. Les packed an Italian feast, and we spent the day exploring the island’s crevices, diving off the side of the boat and swimming around the base of the Fariglioni. By afternoon, we were just purring around Capri’s soaring coastline in dreamy silence.

  La giornatta perfetta for the family at last. But even then, I’m ashamed to confess, I had an ulterior motive.

  I was quietly motoring us toward my personal favorite erotic landmark on Capri, the Villa Malaparte, a site that will forever be associated with the image of the twenty-two-year-old Brigitte Bardot sunbathing naked on its upper deck. This modernist fortress, built on a rocky headland in 1937, resembles a Mayan temple more than a private residence. It made a stunning backdrop for Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film, Le Mépris (Contempt), which has lodged in my imagination since I was a feverish adolescent. Today, the Casa Malaparte is hidden from prying eyes—that is, to all but ships at sea.

  I could picture it all now. While Les and the kids drowsed contentedly on the deck, I happily imagined Brigitte rising from her towel on the rooftop, fluttering down its steps, and diving Venus-like into the turquoise sea.

  And then I turned the rudder around for home.

  NOTES

  The best general introduction to the historical intermingling of sex and travel is Ian Littlewood’s Sultry Climates: Travel and Sex (New York: Da Capo, 2001). The classic overviews of censorship in museums since the Victorian age are Peter Fryer, Private Case, Public Scandal (London: Secker & Warburg, 1966), and Walter Kendrick’s The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). For a brilliant survey of the history of erotica, I would also recommend The Erotic Arts, by Peter Webb (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983).

  THE DEVIL’S TRAVEL BUREAU

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p; For the Secretum’s formation and location within the museum, see British Museum Trustees Minutes 10.918, Jan. 13, 1866.

  The Museum Secretum Acquisitions Register is available in the British Museum archives.

  General Background

  Caygill, Marjorie, Building the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1999).

  Caygill, Marjorie, A. W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1997).

  Gaimster, David, “Sex and Sensibility at the British Museum,” History Today, Aug. 2000.

  Gibson, Ian, The Erotomaniac: The Secret Life of Henry Spencer Ashbee (London: Faber; New York: Da Capo, 2001).

  Thomas, Donald S., Swinburne: The Poet in His World (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979).

  Wilson, David M., The British Museum: A History (London: British Museum Press, 2002).

  The Henry James quote is in: Buchan, John, Memory Hold-the-Door (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1940), 151–52.

  Nineteenth-Century Visitors to the Secretum

  Although few left records, we do know that a core group of free-living literary gents who railed against Victorian prudery frequented the British Museum cache. The aptly named Sir William Hardman, magistrate and “genial connoisseur of smut,” was alerted by staff whenever an interesting new erotic object was obtained (“for my Pantagruelian fancies are well known to one of two of the Museum people,” he wrote in a letter). The bibliophile Henry Spencer Ashbee, presumed author of the Victorian porn classic My Secret Life, was a regular, and he wrote to Museum trustees to complain about the Secretum’s lighting, lamenting that the inspection of such “interesting specimens” could only be conducted “only under the greatest disadvantages.” The clique of randy connoisseurs included the poet Algernon Swinburne, aficionado of the history of birching; the explorer Sir Richard Burton, translator of the Kama Sutra; and Richard Monckton Milnes, expert on the Marquis de Sade, whose erotica-filled country mansion was known among friends as Aphrodisiopolis, and who would become a British Museum curator himself in 1881. All, not coincidentally, were inveterate travelers.

  CHAPTER ONE: HELLFIRE HOLIDAYS

  General on Eighteenth-Century Sex Clubs

  Dashwood, Sir Francis, The Dashwoods of West Wycombe (New York: Aurum Press, 1987).

  Linnane, Fergus, London, the Wicked City: A Thousand Years of Vice in the Capital (London: Robson Books, 2006).

  Lord, Evelyn, The Hellfire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 2008).

  Rubenhold, Hallie, The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the Extraordinary Story of Harris’ List (London: Tempies, 2005).

  Peakman, Julie (ed.), Lascivious Bodies: A Sexual History of the Eighteenth Century (London: Atlantic, 2004).

  The Beggar’s Benison and Wig Club

  Book of the Old Edinburgh Club for the Year 1910, vol. 3.

  Fairnie, Henry, The Fife Coast from Queensferry to Fifeness (London, 1860).

  Jones, Louis C., The Clubs of the Georgian Rakes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).

  Records of the Most Ancient and Puissant Order of the Beggar’s Benison and Merryland, Anstruther (printed for private distribution only, Anstruther, 1892; repr. Edinburgh: Paul Harris, 1982).

  Stevenson, David, The Beggar’s Benison: Sex Clubs of Enlightenment Scotland and their Rituals (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell Press, 2001).

  King George IV

  Ambrose, Tom, The King and the Vice Queen: George IV’s Last Scandalous Affair (London: Sutton, 2005).

  Prebble, John, The King’s Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, August 1822 (New York/London: HarperCollins, 1988).

  English Flagellation Habits

  Gibson, Ian, The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England and After (London: Duckworth, 1978).

  Cooper, Reverend W. M., Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London, c.1885).

  London Clubs

  Brooks’s Club, founded in 1764, is the oldest of the surviving clubs in London, and one of the first to have permanent rooms; the current building dates from 1778. On my visit, somewhat to my surprise, a very amicable attendant named Alistair showed me around the upstairs parlor. They had an original wooden gaming table from the club’s earliest days, with a semicircle cut into it to accommodate the girth of Charles James Fox, an eager but obese card player. The walls were decorated with oil portraits of the first Dilettanti Society members in fancy dress. Today, the twelve members of the society still meet at Brooks’s Club every three months; the initiation rites, devised by Sir Francis Dashwood, are still secret, although it is known that they involve fancy dress.

  Pubic Hairs as Lovers’ Gifts

  When the young Lady Caroline Lamb sent a pubic lock to Lord Byron in 1812, she went one step further and dipped it in blood—perhaps as a sign that she was not pregnant.

  CHAPTER TWO: PARIS TO THE GUTTER

  Anonymous, The Pretty Women of Paris (Paris, 1883; repr. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1996).

  Anonymous, The Shuttered Houses of Paris: Being a Companion Volume to “The Pretty Women of Paris” (Paris, 1906; repr. New York: Grove Press, 1996).

  Baldick, Robert (ed. & tr.), Pages from the Goncourt Journal (London: Oxford University Press, 1980).

  Bernheimer, Charles, Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

  Boudard, Alphonse, and Romi, L’Age d’Or des Maisons Closes (Paris: Albin Michel, 1990).

  Canet, Nicole, Maisons Closes: 1860–1946. (Editions Nicole Canet, Paris, 2009).

  De la Bigne, Yolaine, Valtesse de la Bigne, ou Le Pouvoir de la Volupté (Paris: Librairie académique Perrin, 1999).

  Harsin, Jill, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).

  Hussey, Andrew, Paris: the Secret History (London: Bloomsbury, 2006).

  Lemonier, Marc, and Alexandre Dupouy, Histoire(s) du Paris Libertin (Paris: La Musardine, 2003).

  Romi, Maisons Closes dans L’Histoire, L’Art, La Littérature et Les Moeurs, 2 vol. (Paris: Robert Miquet, 1952).

  Seigel, Jerrold, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986).

  Weintraub, Stanley, Edward the Caresser: The Playboy Prince Who Became Edward VII (New York: Free Press, 2001).

  Zola, Émile, Nana, intro. Luc Sante (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006).

  CHAPTER THREE: INFERNAL PROVENCE

  The classic biography of the Marquis de Sade is Francine du Plessix Gray, At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

  On Lacoste

  Fauville, Henri, La Coste: Sade en Provence (Aix-en-Provence, France: La Calade, 1984).

  On Early Visitors to the Castle

  Cabanès, Dr. Augustin, Le Cabinet Secret de l’Histoire, vol. 3 (Paris, 1901).

  Courtet, Jules, Dictionnaire Géographique, Historique, Archaeologique, Biographique (Paris, 1857).

  Jacobs, P. L., Mélanges Bibliographiques (Paris, 1871).

  The Perrottet Connection

  Bourdin, Paul, Correspondence Inédite du Marquis de Sade: de ses proches et de ses familieres publié avec une introduction des annals et des notes (Paris: Librairie de France, 1929).

  Laborde, Alice, Correspondences du Marquis de Sade et de ses Proches Enrichies de Documents, Notes et Commentaires, vol. 7, 1773–1776, La Vie Quotidienne au Château de La Coste (Geneva: Slatkine, 1994).

  Lely, Gilbert, Vie du Marquis de Sade, écrite sur des données nouvelles et accompagnée de nombreux documents, le plus souvent inédits, vol. 1, 1740–1773 (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1982).

  The Marquis de Sade’s Correspondence

  Papiers de Maurice Heine, tome 1, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, FR NOUV. ACQ NAF 24384-24397.

  For Swinburne on Sade, se
e Donald S. Thomas above.

  CHAPTER FOUR: SEVEN-HUNDRED-YEAR ITCH

  Classen, Albrecht, The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

  Duvernoy, Jean, Le Registre d’Inquisition de Jacques Fournier, 1318–1325, 3 vol. (Paris: Mouton, 1976).

  Duvernoy, Jean, Inquisition à Pamiers (Paris, 1966).

  Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294–1324 (London: Penguin, 1980).

  Weis, René, The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290–1329 (New York/London: Viking Penguin, 2000).

  O’Shea, Stephen, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (London: Viking Penguin, 2000).

  CHAPTER FIVE: WILD AND CRAZY SWISS

  Hay, Daisy, Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry’s Greatest Generation (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010).

  Dangerfield, Elma, Byron and the Romantics in Switzerland (London: Ascent Books, 1978).

  Holmes, Richard, Shelley: The Pursuit (New York: NYRB Classics, 2003).

  Marchand, Leslie A., Byron: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1957).

  O’Brien, Edna, Byron in Love (New York: Norton, 2009).