HIDDEN QUEER STORIES:
An Updated Timeline of Dartmouth’s LGBTQ+ History Through Fiction (1910-1950)
The Project
During the 22X term, I spent the summer in Rauner Special Collections library as part of the Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship. My goal was to uncover stories about marginalized student experiences by looking at the themes present in works of fiction published in old student publications.
Works of fiction are very powerful vessels because the mere act of reading can facilitate social understanding of other identity groups. Additionally, fiction can be a great mode for a writer who has experienced some form of discrimination or trauma. Writing through the guise of fiction can make it easier for someone who has experienced such harm to talk about these experiences without outing themselves and without making the events feel more real.
Considering these realities, I took a tour through five historical Dartmouth literary magazines with the goal of uncovering stories that may give us new insights into what queer life may have been like for students during the early 20th century on campus.
1910 - 1912
The final years of the Dartmouth literary magazine, which began on campus (as the Dartmouth Literary Monthly) in 1886
Stories from The Lit Mag (1910–12)
1910
The Class Grind
By Henry Bailey Stevens
Vol. 25, No. 2
Shows the development of a relationship between two college men, one who is our narrator, and the other who is a social outcast who is going blind. The narrator develops a deep connection to the other man despite his condition.
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Buddy Story, Extra Attention, Isolation
A Pullman Idyll
By Malcolm Gale Rollins
Vol. 25, No. 6
Two men with a close relationship compete over a woman they met on a train. The woman invites them to her show, and she ends up being a female impersonator. They are angered by their attraction.
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Buddy Story, Projection / Jealousy, Disguise & Trickery
1911
Pete Brounard
By Henry Bailey Stevens
Vol. 26, No. 2
Tells the story of a man's unrequited love and a woman's grief at not loving who she is supposed to. Gives the reader insight into a male author's perception of a woman's thoughts around attraction and love.
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Queer Woman, Queer Subject, Unrequited Love
1912
Connie LaVerne
By Sydney A. Clark
Vol. 26, No. 4
A Dartmouth man tries to prove his masculinity by asking out a girl, but the girl ends up being his sister, who tricked him regarding her identity. Gives the reader insight into a male author's imagination of a woman's mind.
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Female Narrator, Disguise & Trickery
All the Cedars of Lebanon
By H. C.
Vol. 26, No. 4
Tells the tragic story of a woman who lives alone and likely has some form of mental illness. The people of her village suspect her of being a witch and describe her as queer. Demonstrates the immorality of these views of women.
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Queer Female, Female Narrator
The Citizen
By Forrest C. Blood
Vol. 26, No. 4
Tells the story of a man who voluntarily exiles himself after being cut out from society. Highlights how people may act when faced with persecution. While it is not explicitly queer, it can act as a metaphor to responses to homophobia.
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Unspoken Info, Bury your Gays, Internal Conflict
The Toll
By Warren Elliot Carleton
Vol. 26, No. 4
Tells the story of a sailor and his captor, who he seems to have a loving relationship towards. Demonstrates extreme loyalty between all male crew mates, and highlights the conflicting nature of such relationships.
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Isolation
The Little Mother
By H. C.
Vol. 26, No. 6
Tells the story of a Boy who needs a doctor to fix him in order to be a better man. His characterization paints him as a queer figure. All the characters have no names, just identifying titles (Boy, Little Mother, Man, etc.)
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Unspoken Info, Hyper-masculinity
How the Lady-Bees Came to Govern
By James Theodore Marriner
Vol. 26, No. 6
Demonstrates all alternate society with flipped gender norms, using a colony of bees as the central metaphor. Highlights the injustices women face daily, and expresses a man's views on gender roles and hierarchy.
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Hyper-masculinity
The Saint
By Henry Bailey Stevens
Vol. 26, No. 7
Introduces us to an explicit trans character, a man named Eva. The narrator addresses Eva with he/him pronouns, compares him to a woman, and states that he decided to become a man because he lived with a man.
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Religion / Morality
The Girl in the Subway
By H. B. Van'Dyne
Vol. 26, No. 8
Provides the reader with a character who claims that he usually does not like women, and that they tend to not like him. While he does meet a girl who peaks his interest during the story, his introduction pins him as queer.
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"The One"
A Pullman Idyll
The Dartmouth Literary Magazine
Vol. 25, No. 6
Malcolm G. Rollins '11
Rollins is the author of "A Pullman Idyll." While a student, he was also on the football team. After college he spent some time in the military and worked in publishing and advertising.
He did end up getting married, but not until 1926, 15 years after his graduation. He only had one kid, his wife's son from an earlier marriage, who he adopted as his own.
Henry B. Stevens '12
Stevens is the writer of "The Class Grind," "Pete Brounard," and "The Saint." During his time at Dartmouth, he was a contributing editor of the Dartmouth Literary Magazine.
After graduation, he went on to be a writer and educator. He and his wife both wrote for the Women's Journal (where he eventually became assistant editor). An article from the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine describes his wife as a "noted feminist, writer and pioneer in women's suffrage work." He also was a playwright, and he taught at University of New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station.
What's known?
By 1910, the stereotype of the "Dartmouth Man" has become a strong presence on campus. In his 1939 thesis, William Goodman write's about the sense of inferiority that Dartmouth students felt at the time towards institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. He claims that they leaned into this stereotype of all being a "hard drinking, rough tough, and athletic back-woodsman." Additionally, campus culture depicted the freshman hazing rituals of Delta Alpha as a "systematized manner of acquainting the men." Even administration felt the rituals served a purpose.
However, at the same time, this period of Dartmouth's history marks the beginning of students' interest in social issues affecting the world outside of campus. Goodman's thesis mentions two interesting articles from The Dartmouth, one published in 1910, the other in 1912. The first one claims that "the ultimate purpose of a college is to broaden the minds of those pursuing a higher education. Socialism should be studied by the college or university student. The doctrines of the belief should be fairly presented, without bias or prejudice, favorably or adverse." The second talks about students reading Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle as an early example of students paying attention to social problems.
What's new?
Not much of this "known history" specifically discusses what life for queer students may have been like. However, the overt culture of hyper-masculinity on campus, along with the knowledge of the time period, can allow us to infer that campus in general was not a safe space for people to come out and live authentically. Even then, we see several stories with pretty explicit queer themes. The themes presented in "The Saint" and "A Pullman Idyll" for example, likely would have been hard for readers to overlook. Additionally, the fact that Henry B. Stevens, who wrote three stories with queer themes, including "The Saint," was in an important leadership role indicates that the committee who selected the editors were ok with promoting members who published such stories.
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This time period also aligned with the beginning of students' interest in the world outside of Hanover. Thus, we can infer that students may have started to gain access to knowledge about queer communities in urban spaces around 1910. Today, historians are well aware of the existence of communities where queer men were able to coexist out of the closet during this time period. For example, the book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 discusses such communities in New York City, communities which started before and lasted beyond this period.
1913 - 1915
The early years of the Bema
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Campus culture was likely largely the same, so the presence of queer stories, unsurprisingly, does not start to dwindle.
Stories from The Bema (1913–15)
1913
The Voice of Cremona
By Gilbert S. Pattillo
Vol. 1, No. 6
Tells the story of two​ roommates, one of whom is blind and plays the violin. The other roommate, who is the narrator, seems entranced by his roommate and his music. He ends the story sadly once his roommate kisses a woman.
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Buddy Story, Extra Attention, Project / Jealousy
Tragedy Unmasked
By David B. Kinne Jr
Vol. 2, No. 1
Offers us two queer figures. The man wants an adventure but doesn't believe he will find it in a woman. After he finds a girl he thinks he likes, she discusses never liking the men who kiss her and how she plans to not marry.
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Anti-Marriage, "The One," Queer Woman, Unrequited Love
1914
Looking for Romance
By David B. Kinne Jr
Vol. 2, No. 3
The Pipe of Peace
By Myron J. Files
Vol. 2, No. 4
An Evening with Phil O'Frenis
By George Blanchard Phillips
Vol. 2, No. 4
The Policy of Silence
By John F. Wheelock
Vol. 2, No. 6
A Witless Optimist
By Myron J. Files
Vol. 2, No. 6
Dorymates
By Gilbert S. Pattillo
Vol. 2, No. 7
Tells the story of a man searching for Romance who cannot seem to understand why he is unable to find it. The narrator personifies Romance as a dead man, but shows us the man's willingness to try to love a girl without it.
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Anti-Love, Internal Conflict
Personifies a pipe and discusses its virtues. The phallic imagery of the pipe, along with its personification and tendency for companionship, makes it a story fit for a queer reading
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Buddy Story
The narrator compares his relationship with his college friend Phil to the relationships had between heroes of Greece: romance in situations without alternatives. Directly comments on what the Bema should publish.
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Buddy Story, Religion / Morality
Not a story centered on non-normative gender or sexuality, but it shows an example of society covering up a man's suicide to hide some secret about his identity. Demonstrates how the "bury your gays" often functioned in reality.
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Unspoken Info, Bury your Gays
Tells the story of two sailors who are stranded out to sea together. The narrator initially seems frustrated at the other sailor's talk of romance, but becomes distraught when he goes out to find food and dies.
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Buddy Story, Extra Attention, Isolation
Tells the story of two male best friends who are stuck out to sea together. They both love the same woman, but once one is dying, the other promises to give her up, expressing that his real love is for his friend.
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Buddy Story, Bury your Gays, Isolation
1915
Evenings with Phil O'Frenis
By George Blanchard Phillips
Vol. 3, No. 5
The second part of the previously included story, "An Evening with Phil O'Frenis." Phil discusses his failed relationship with a woman and discusses how he will never love again.
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Buddy Story, Projection / Jealousy
Tragedy Unmasked
The Bema
Vol. 2, No. 1
Gilbert S. Pattillo '14
Pattillo is the writer of "Dorymates" and "The Voice of the Cremona." After his time at Dartmouth, he served in the war office of the Adjunct General in DC during World War I, but he primarily was a writer. He wrote several children's stories, but he never marries or had any children of his own.
In place of mentioning a spouse, his obituary published in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine spoke about the frequent fishing trips he took with a fellow classmate, Sherman Saltmarsh '14.
David B. Kinne Jr '15
Kinne wrote two stories with queer themes, Tragedy Unmasked" and "Looking for Romance." Interestingly though, he also wrote an opinion piece titled "Girls," where he talks about the challenges of growing up as a boy because of the
Kinne was a significant member of The Bema, as he was managing editor during his third year and associate editor during his fourth year. He was also known by classmates as someone who read a lot.
He served in the military during World War I, and then in 1926 died very young. Mysteriously, it took almost a decade for the alumni office to learn of his cause of death, which supposedly was pneumonia.
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George B. Phillips '16
Phillips was another significant member of the Bema, also on the board. He acted as associate editor his third year. He wrote both "An Evening with Phil O'Frenis" and its sequel "Eventings with Phil O'Frenis."Like Kinne and Pattillo, he also never married. He was a psychology and philosophy professor and participated in civilian relief work.
When he died, he gave a friend a message to relay to a another man named Stirling. The friend discusses the message in a newsletter: "You said that he died on that day, so his last thoughts were evidently of you, Stirling. [...] he felt he must send word of you when he was ill enough to die on that die. He must have been devoted to you, poor fellow."
What's known?
There was not much change to campus culture between this period of time and the previous one. Both periods idealized hyper masculinity and the image of the "Dartmouth Man," but encouraged some form of learning about the world outside of Dartmouth. Campus was still very small and isolated as well. The Bema steps in just a year after the Dartmouth Literary Magazine goes out of print, and early on fills a very similar purpose before transitioning to acting as both a literary magazine and a pictorial publication.
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Additionally, World War I does begin during this time period over seas.
What's new?
Even though it seems like not much of campus culture has changed between the end of the Dartmouth Literary Magazine and the beginning of The Bema, this publication seems to express that comfort with expressing queer themes in a public setting, in a published magazine advertised to all of campus, is increasing to at least some degree. There are a higher number of important players in The Bema who are publishing queer stories, and more students are publishing more than one queer story during their time writing for the magazine.
Another interesting feature of the writers for the early Bema are that more of the significant writers (those who have written more than one queer story and/or those who have published at least one explicitly queer story) of this time period remained unmarried throughout their whole life than in any other time. The biographies of some of these important writers fit what we might expect to be a biography of a queer man in the early 20th century. Thus, it is likely that there was in fact a decently sized queer population on the staff of The Bema.
In terms of themes, this time period sees the end of the Buddy Story's popularity. Six of the nine stories published during this time fit this trope, and then the trope almost entirely disappears until after World War II. Isolation stories were also popular, and they never see a come back. This likely relates to the fact that students were becoming aware of instances of men in the military having "buddy" relationships during World War I. Buddy stories may have stopped being an efficient way to code queerness without outing oneself. And if that is true, we can then conclude that the buddy stories were in fact representative of queer relationships.
1916 - 1919
The middle years of the Bema
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The US has become an active player in World War I, and the Bema starts to publish fewer works of fiction. This era sees the publication of no queer stories.
What's known?
Once again, campus culture does not change much between the previous two periods and now. In his thesis, Goodman talks about how literary undergraduate clubs that end up coming to campus during the mid twenties on campus "would have been laughed off campus" during this period.
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However, Dartmouth students continue to look at the world outside campus. Instead of questioning more abstract ideas such as their social and economic beliefs though, a lot of students' focus centers on the war. By 1917, the US officially enters the war. Some students and recent alumni become active in the war effort, and those still on campus continue to stay aware.
What's new?
The lack of queer fiction at this time period can lead to a few separate inferences:
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The members that made of the subtly-queer community of The Bema in its early years have either left the publication or have graduated, making it less of a space for those who once found solace on its pages,
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Dartmouth's administration may have become more suspicious of the publication, and the onset of the war may have acted as a good transition point to spin the magazine into a more non-fiction and editorial based publication while maintaining the community of writers, or finally,
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Culture on campus during the war meant there was no possibility for queer community in even literary spaces.
Nothing I found in the archives allows us to conclude any of these with any certainty, but it is possible that all three factors played a role in the lack of queer fiction during this time.
1920 - 1925
The final years of the Bema and revival of the Dartmouth Literary Magazine
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Significant players such as Clifford Orr become active in publications, and the number of queer stories grows again.
Stories from The Bema (1920–22)
1920
Relatives
By Clifford B. Orr
Vol. 9, No. 1
Two Dartmouth roommates go to a vaudeville performance on campus together, and the performer is one of their moms. Can be a metaphor for being uncomfortable in a space where everyone is attracted to a girl but you.
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Buddy Story, Unspoken Info, Internal Conflict
The Alley of Twilight
Anonymous
Vol. 9, No. 2
Tells the story of a girl who does not have an interest in men. She ends up with one guy later than other girls, but he eventually tells her he never intends to marry her, and she tells him she has now lost all trust in men.
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"The One," Queer Woman
1921
"Watch that Jazz!"
By Clifford B. Orr
Vol. 10, No. 3
Tells the story of a girl who initially believes she must refuse a man's proposal because of their differing music tastes. However, once his music saves her mom, she feels she must marry him. She finds a reason besides love to marry.
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"The One," Queer Woman, Anti-Love
1922
Cigarettes
By Analytikos
Vol. 10, No. 7
Sets up a dream-like scene for the reader to encounter. Describes the physicality of two women, including their eyes, lips, and hands. A man is also in the scene, but his bodily features are not central to the story's imagery.
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Dreamscape
Stories from The Lit Mag (1922–23)
1922
The Bluff
By Clifford B. Orr
Vol. 1, No. 1
A man tells the story of a woman's death to her mother. The man and the were at an amusement park. She died on a rollercoaster to prove her strength to another man. The man telling the story loved her unrequitedly.
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Bury your Gays, Unrequited Love
The Damned Fool
By Clifford B. Orr
Vol. 1, No. 2
Our narrator tells the story of their husband's death. There is no reference to the narrator's gender. We could assume the narrator is a woman based on the time period, but it is coming from a male writer (writing about his husband).
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Female Narrator, Bury your Gays
The Bookshop
By Gordon Lewis
Vol. 1, No. 2
Tells the story of a man who never considered women to be people with whom he could have close relationships. He ends up having sexual relations with one woman, but his attraction is unrequited.
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"The One," Unrequited Love, Dreamscape
1923
Madame
By A. L. Vincent
Vol. 2, No. 5
Tells the story of an actress who​ values both wealth and her independence over love. She accepts that she will never fall in love and offers to marry a man just for his money. He refuses the lackluster proposal, and she doesn't mind.
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Queer Woman, Anti-Love
The Shell that had been Pete
By Herbert S. Talbot
Vol. 2, No. 5
Tells the story of a man who believes he will only ever be happy if he recreates a specific dream by finding this specific girl, who he kissed while riding a golden chariot in said dream. Otherwise, he will only ever know loneliness.
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"The One," Bury your Gays, Dreamscape
Stories from The Bema (1924–25)
1924
The Brown-Haired Girl
By Herbert S. Talbot
Vol. 13, No. 1
Shows an interaction between a college man and an uneducated woman. The woman is jealous of his education and of his love life, yet she cannot seem to understand or express the reasoning behind her jealousy.
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Anti-Marriage, Queer Woman, Female Narrator, Unspoken Info,
Internal Conflict
Disenchantment
By Emanuel M. Benson
Vol. 13, No. 3
Tells the story of a man and his childhood friend. He cannot seem to explain to this friend why she and her love will never actually be able to make him happy. She will never be able to understand their unspoken differences.
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Unspoken Info, Internal Conflict
1925
Success -- A Novelette
By Louis Wilson Ingram
Vol. 13, No. 6
Tells the story of a man based on what people say to him. A doctor emphasizes his suppressed sexual desires. Everyone else thinks that because of his success, he never needed a relationship. He ends up killing himself.
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Unspoken Info, Bury your Gays, Internal Conflict
Pride and Prejudice
By Emanuel M. Benson
Vol. 13, No. 7
Tells the story of a man who has no interest in the women his roommate often talks about. He would rather stay alone that meet people at a party. There are a lot of dashes indicating that there is a lot that the narrator cannot say.
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Anti-Marriage, Unspoken Info
Watch that Jazz!
The Bema
Vol. 10, No. 3
Clifford B. Orr '22
Orr is the writer of several stories from both The Bema and The Literary Magazine including "Relatives," "Watch that Jazz!," "The Bluff," and "The Damn Fool." He was on the literary staff of the Bema and almost acted as its editor-in-chief before deciding to step down from the position to focus on his position as the president of the all-male theater troupe The Dartmouth Players. He, along with some, was also the founder of the revived Dartmouth Literary Magazine.
Of all the writers I researched, Orr is the only one who we can confirm was in fact queer. After his time at Dartmouth he went on to be a writer and worked for some time at the New Yorker. One of of co-workers, Brendan Gill, mentions Orr's sexuality in his memoir, Here at the New Yorker. Gill writes “Alcoholic and homosexual, Kip took terrible chances with his life, and it became a wonder that he wasn’t murdered; more than once, he was rolled, beaten up, and left for dead in some dirty doorway in the Village, and yet he survived to die sadly in the small college town where for a little while, he had known good fortune.” Additionally, he wrote two successful novels, including the book The Dartmouth Murders. Orr dedicated both novels to a fellow Dartmouth student, Franklin McDuffee, who was also a member of the Bema literary staff and also is suspected today of having been queer.
Herbert S. Talbot '24
Talbot is the writer of "The Shell that had been Pete" and "The Brown-Haired Girl." He got his start with the literary magazines writing for the revived Dartmouth Literary Magazine, and then was editor-in-chief of The Bema during his senior year.
After his time at Dartmouth, he was a doctor, specializing in the study of paraplegia and rehabilitation. He was also a Major of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps during World War II. He did marry and have one child.
Emanuel M. Benson '27
Benson is the writer of "Disenchantment" and "Pride and Prejudice." It is interesting to see that these two stories come from the same writer, as they both rely on the Unspoken Information trope. Benson was also on the literary staff of the Bema during his second year.
After his time at Dartmouth, Benson became a journalist and art educator. He was married twice and had two kids, both with his first wife.
What's known?
The early 20s are a really interesting time on campus. In fact, we actually know so much about this time, that the two columns are just more confusing!
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After the war ends, the size of Dartmouth's student population grows, the number of applicants begins to grow, and campus starts to see a larger proportion of high caliber students. A 1924 report stated that the purpose of the college was to "insist on a dual aim in education — the fullest development of the individual, and his adequate training for membership of society. Additionally, in 1925, campus starts to open up to the outside world even more. The roads between Hanover, White River Junction, and Lebanon start getting plowed in the winter, allowing students to travel out of town more frequently. Administration introduced a new curriculum to encourage students to develop their own cultural interests, and literary clubs such as The Pleiad and The Round Robin came to campus.
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However, students who became involved in these activities likely still faced criticism from the larger student body. In his thesis, Goodman cites the 1924 novel The Plastic Age, written by Percy Marks, who taught English at Dartmouth during the early 20s. Marks based the fictional college he writes about in the novel largely on Dartmouth. The students in the novel use the slang term "wet," described by Marks in the novel as such: "a man is wet if he isn’t a regular guy, he is wet if he isn’t smooth; he’s wet if he has intellectual interests and lets the mob discover them; and, strangely enough, he’s wet by the same token if he is utterly stupid…. What horrible little conformers you are, and how you loathe anyone who doesn’t conform! … Just now it’s ‘au fait’ to like poetry; a man who does is exceedingly wet, indeed; he is effeminate, a sissy."
Previously Discovered Queer Spaces
Because of previous research work by other researchers using the archives at Rauner, we are lucky to know about two spaces that did provide students with opportunities to be out and queer during the early to mid twenties on campus. One of these spaces was another Dartmouth student organization, the all male theater troupe The Dartmouth Players. The other was housed off campus, just across the river in Norwich, in a house now known as the house of Beaver Meadow.
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In the Dartmouth Players, men would play all roles, including the female leads and the chorus girls. During this time, debate started to brew about whether allowing men to play female parts would make them more effeminate, and thus, whether it was dangerous. The staff of The Tower, which was another literary magazine active on campus at the time, published an article titled "Ingenue in Braces," where they discussed the issue as such:
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"But the question presents itself, .... is the man who has steeped
himself in femininity really acting or is he being natural? If the
former is true, he is to be congratulated. If the latter ........
The Tower is of the opinion that female impersonations are
splendid tests of a man's acting ability, when indulged in in
moderation, but in some cases have a harmful effect when done
in excess. We present no examples. Fortunately, there are no
examples to flaunt. But there is a danger, and preventative
legislation would be advisable."​
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Clifford Orr, was also president of the Dartmouth Players, and he, along with other members of the organization at the time, such as his friend Zuckerman, were under the administration's scrutiny. A lot of our understanding about the Dartmouth Player's comes from research performed by Katie Carithers '20 during her own fellowship term at Rauner. She discussed correspondence between President Hopkins and a doctor he brought to campus out of fear that allowing men to crossdress, along with other aspects of the queer culture present in the organization. From her research, we are now aware of how extremely homophobic Hopkins's views and policies were, and can understand that while some queer communities may have started forming during this time, it was still very important to make sure these communities stayed underground.
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To learn more about the Dartmouth Players, their connection to Dartmouth LGBTQ+ history, and the administration's response, you can listen to the following podcast episodes and Carithers's blog post on the subject.
Also during this time period, a group of Dartmouth students had bought (or rented) a house in Beaver Meadow, VT. The owners would host parties for students and recent alumni, many of whom were involved in theater at Dartmouth, specifically a lot of the men who played female leads with the Dartmouth Players. Today, from the article "The Boys of Beaver Meadow: A Homosexual Community at 1920s Dartmouth College" written by Nicholas L. Syrett of University of Kansas, we know that the house acted a gay community for its attendees. Among the list of people who we know have attended the house is Clifford Orr. Franklin McDuffee, who was also on the literary board of The Bema, but who wrote only poetry, has also been linked to the events at the house. Orr dedicated both of his mystery novels to McDuffee.
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However, in 1925, Hopkins worked to dampen out any notes of queerness available to students on campus. In 1925, the Dartmouth Players were required to start bringing in local women to play the female leads. Also in 1925, Hopkins took action to shut down the events occurring at the house in Beaver Meadow, supposedly because these events were happening during Prohibition and he became aware of the alcohol consumption at the party.
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What's new?
While the early twenties likely was a scary time to be queer in rural New Hampshire, there seemed to be several ways for students to find others like themselves. We now know that there were at least couple of people who were active both in Dartmouth's literary spaces and in the other now-recognized queer spaces at Dartmouth (The Dartmouth Players and the House of Beaver Meadow). For one, this allows us to consider that there may have been a wider queer community across various groups in the arts on campus, not just among members of the theater community. This fact also gives us some credibility to infer that literary spaces could have been part of, or even hubs for, hidden queer communities during other time periods. While we may not have explicit knowledge on the existence of other students like Clifford Orr from the 1910s or into the 30s and 40s, we can reasonably conclude that others likely existed.
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While Orr was an important player in both the revived Literary Magazine and The Bema, it is important to note that queer themes continued to be present in published fiction beyond his graduation. In terms of themes present throughout the fiction published at this time, the Unspoken Information and the Internal Conflict tropes were both very popular. This could indicate two separate things. For one, students who may not have felt safe or comfortable expressing their queerness in ways as public as crossdressing may have felt empowered by these communities on campus, and then may have written about queerness in subtle ways.
1926 - 1928
Only standing literary publication at the time is The Tower, which ran from 1924 - 1929
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However, as previously discussed, The Tower had published an article expressing the belief of the publication as a whole, not even of a specific individual, that the existence of female impersonation on campus, within the Dartmouth Players, was "dangerous" and that "preventative legislation would be advisable." After reading the entirety of the publication's first volume, which included this article, I decided to move on and focus my attention on spaces that had more potential to provide opportunities for individuals to write about and/or explore their identities in a more supportive atmosphere.
What's known?
By this period, Dartmouth's administration had effectively pushed any queer communities we already knew about off of campus. While the Dartmouth Players still existed, men were no longer allowed to play female leads, and eventually, any female parts at all. Additionally, according to Goodman's thesis, this time period coincided with the height of the "conformity-blase" period. Goodman writes that President Hopkins attempted to call the students out for their conformity and spark excitement and change.
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Another important feature of life that influenced campus culture at the time was the fact that the U.S. economy was booming. Goodman states that students were no longer going to Dartmouth to get a job and earn a living, but to learn how to live.
What's new?
This likely was a time of increased silence on campus. Very abruptly, queer men on campus lost access to creative and expressive outlets that allowed them to explore their identities, and they lost access to communities where they once were able to come together.
1929 - 1932
Early days of The Dart, a publication officially housed under the English Department
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We can begin to notice a trend where the early years of a publication seem to present queer themes more frequently
Stories from The Dart (1929–32)
1929
Those People!
By D. A. MacCornack
Vol. 1, March
Provides the first example of the use of the word "homosexual" in a story. A man is dancing with a woman, who mentions her homosexual professor. The man cannot tell if she is against the professor's sexuality.
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Anti-Marriage, Queer Woman, Outside Look
1930
He Wanted to Love
By William E. Woodruff
Vol. 1, May
Tells the story of a man who has a wife, but wants to find any other woman to love. He claimed that he wanted to be "something he was not." His wife believes that he is not in love with her, but with the idea of love itself.
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Dreamscape
Education
By J. S. Whiton
Vol. 1, May
Tells the story of a little boy whose bullies call him a sissy. His father says that he needs to fight back to prove that he is a real man, and the boy punches the bully. Shows how the fear of seeming like a sissy can cause harm.
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Hyper-masculinity
1931
Wedding
By Edward Hutchings Jr
Vol. (?), January
Tells the story of two people witnessing a wedding. The doorman things the groom is attractive, while the woman thinks the bride is pretty. Both believe that weddings are a waste of money.
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Anti-Marriage
Revelation
By Roger J. Kafka
Vol. (?), February
Tells the story of a man's final moments before he is put to death for killing a man. He is afraid of what will happen after his death and regrets not accepting his true self sooner.
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Unspoken Info, Bury your Gays, Internal Conflict
That Boy
By Edward Humes
Vol. (?), May
A female narrator tells the story of a strange looking boy on a bus who is watching two girls. She imagines what he likely is thinking about the girls and what he wants to say to them. Sounds like a projection of her own thoughts.
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Queer Woman, Female Narrator, Dreamscape
1932
Ashes to Burn
By Robert J. Mann
Vol. (?), January
Tells the story of a girl explaining herself to a boy who once loved her. She said she is tired of going out with boys and prefers to spend time with girls. She has turned down many proposals and fears she'll need to become a nun.
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Anti-Marriage, Queer Woman, Outside Look, Internal Conflict, Religion / Morality
Those People!
The Dart
March 1929
Robert J. Mann '34
Mann is the writer of "Ashes to Burn." He was an English major.
During World War II, he was an officer in the Navy and produced training films. Also after his time at Dartmouth, he worked as a writer and producer for both TV and radio. He lived and worked in Hollywood. His last wife was an actress in the business. He got married three separate times, but never had any children.
What's known?
The crash of 1929 acted as a wakeup call for many Dartmouth students. Goodman writes that prior to the depression, the disorganized student body fought against change or social thinking, but that students viewed the mindset of U.S. President Hoover — that "men will die and there must be someone to take their place" — as acceptable. Politics became a new focus for many undergraduates.
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Once again though, even as politics and social issues become part of the conversation on campus, we do not know of any actual queer spaces for students.
What's new?
It would make sense for presentations of queerness to start to grow again as more students began to question how institutions may contribute to societal harms, such as was the case during the Great Depression. Students at this time may have started to form their own opinions on issues outside of what was typically considered politics at the time.
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Additionally, we now have another example of a magazine publishing a higher number of fictional pieces with queer themes. This provides us with more evidence relating to the rise and fall of publications and supports the idea that the energy behind new publications allowed young editorial boards to publish the sorts of stories they wanted to see rather than the sorts of stories they expected the member's of Dartmouth community to want to pay for.
1933 - 1938
The middle and final years of The Dart
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The Dart likely would have continued to print publications if not for the start of World War II and the termination of all student publishing. Few published pieces have queer themes.
Stories from The Dart (1933–38)
1936
Jeff
By Milton Goldberg
Vol. 8, No. 2
The narrator discusses their relationship to Jeff, a man who once stayed with the narrator until he left to be with a woman. We do not know the gender of the narrator, but they express more interest in Jeff than in the woman.
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Projection / Jealousy, Unspoken Info
1938
The Value of a Dollar
By Milton Goldberg
Vol. 8, No. 2
Tells the story of a girl who is glad to have found a man to be with after being disappointed in all men. Both she and him acknowledge that their relationship will not be happily-ever-after.
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"The One," Queer Woman, Anti-Love
What's known?
By this time, the archetypal "Dartmouth Man" has seen a lot of change. More students begin studying the social sciences, and, Goodman claims, that conversations among friends tend to not center just on sex and alcohol, but also on economics and the future. The hyper-masculine identity had not gone away, but it has evolved to include topics accessible to queer men as well. That being said, Goodman emphasizes how Dartmouth men of this time, when he himself was a student, had almost all gone to Smith or Colby "on a moment's notice" and were excited about the inclusion of two new weekends to the "Dartmouth 'girl' calendar."
To understand this time period, we can also look towards another thesis now, Degrees of Broken Silence: Dartmouth Man, Gay Men, and Women, 1935–1991, written by Allen Arthur Drexel in 1991. He explicitly mentions how Dartmouth's masculine identity amplified societal antigay sentiments of the time. He quotes a gay member of the class of '38, William Wynkoop, who talks about an instance of gaybashing. He witnessed a large group of students beat up another student they assumed to be gay because of an interaction between him and another student in the library stacks. Finally, Drexel emphasizes there there were "almost no images — certainly no positive ones — of a homosexual lifestyle to be found in the media or other prominent segments of society."
What's new?
Once again, we see a decrease in the number of queer stories published during the middle years of a publication. This time though, we never see the number of queer stories increase again. Only two queer stories make it to the pages of The Dart during this time, and both stories have the same author. This could lead us to infer that members of the editorial board did not necessarily oppose the publishing of these sorts of stories, but that individuals did not feel like the general campus culture would have been receptive to such stories. Perhaps students' newfound attention to their futures and to economics forced them to consider the long term scope of relationships
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Another interesting thing to note about this time is that this time did see a higher number of stories that discussed individuals' marginalized identities; however, religion, especially Judaism tended to be the identity discussed rather than gender or sexuality. While there were stories from this era that discussed gender, sexuality, and romantic experiences, these stories often related more to Jewish courting practices or other connections between love and faith than to non-normative sexuality. Even Goldberg, who wrote the two queer stories from this time, primarily wrote stories about Jewish characters. During this time, Hitler had come to power, had begun incorporating his own anti-Jewish sentiments into German law, and started building concentration campus in Europe. Given this reality, it makes sense that stories about Judaism were on the minds of students just across the Atlantic.
1939 - 1945
The US becomes involved in World War II, and no printing of student publications occurs
What's known?
World War II affects many aspects of Dartmouth life. Some men at the time found similar reasons the choose to fight in the war or to attend Dartmouth. In his thesis, Drexel says, "Like many men who enlisted in the armed services during World War II, many gays elected to go to Dartmouth with the hope that somehow, with its all-male composition and reputation as a training ground for unusually sturdy, potent men, the college would cause them to 'go straight.'"
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While there was no explicit policy banning homosexual students at Dartmouth, as there was in the military, queer men in the military actually had more possibilities to come to terms with their identities and experience gay life. Men could entertain themselves with drag shows, encounter gay nightlife in war-boom cities, and even fall in love with each other, but according to Drexel, those possibilities were not available to Dartmouth men at the time.
What's new?
Unfortunately, it is hard to learn much about this era of time without having any stories to refer to, let alone any queer stories. One thing that is important to note though, is that without having publishing opportunities, queer students lost the opportunities to gather with others who were active in the magazines, who may have also been queer.
1946 - 1950
The early years of The Dartmouth Quarterly
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The war ends, and once again, the beginning of the publication sees a wealth of queer-themed fiction.
Stories from The Quarterly (1946–50)
1947
Nolan's Mob
By Robert B Shnayerson
Vol. 1, No. 1
Tells the story of a fight between two boxers. The narrator, who is one of the boxers, describes the physicality of the other boxer's body in vivid detail, expressing some form of appreciation for his appearance.
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Extra Attention
A Different Point of View
By Norton I. Virgien
Vol. 1, No. 1
Tells the story of two male friends who provide help to a woman. She expresses attraction to one of the two men, but he then rejects her. This confuses the other man, who is the narrator.
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Buddy Story, Outside Look
"Blessed are the Poor in Spirit"
By Samuel B. Vitt
Vol. 1, No. 2
Tells the story of two male best friends who love each other as men. Only one of the friends is married. The non-married man later admits that he loves his friend's wife and kisses her.​
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Buddy Story, Projection / Jealousy, Outside Look
1948
The Wasted Chance
By Samuel B. Vitt
Vol. 2, No. 3
Tells the story of a groups of college ​boys hanging out together in one man's dorm. Another man barges into the room and gets very drunk. He frustrates the narrator, but another student informs him that he just wants acceptance.
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Buddy Story, Outside Look
He the Wonderful
By Frank D. Gilroy
Vol. 2, No. 3
Tells the story of a college boy and his roommate, who teaches him how to engage in college social life. The boy gets jealous when his roommate gets a girlfriend. He tries to kill his and obsesses over him the rest of his life.
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Buddy Story, Projection / Jealousy, Bury your Gays
1950
Wilderness
By Brock Brower
Vol. 5, No. 3
A man is staying with a woman in a cabin and meets someone named Peter, who the woman says is a girl. Peter lives in a cabin beyond reality. The man asks Peter about her gender identity. She says she doesn't know or care.
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Bury your Gays
Bronx Nocturne
By Theodore Laskin
Vol. 6, No. 1
An artist performs at Carnegie Hall, and his large Jewish family congratulates him after the performance. However, the man who seems to pay the most attention to the Artist is his manager. He affectionately notices small details.
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Exta Attention
A Different Point of View
The Dartmouth Quarterly
Vol. 1, No. 1
Brock Brower '53
Brower wrote "Wilderness."Aside from the Dartmouth Quarterly, Brower was involved in other publications during his time at Dartmouth. He was involved in both the Jack-O-Lantern, which is the campus comedy magazine, and was the managing editor of The Dartmouth.
After his time at Dartmouth, he served in the army for two years in the intelligence unit. He also became a prolific writer. He went on to write and publish several novels, and he also worked as a journalist. He did marry, and he and his wife had five children together.
What's known?
In the postwar era, the U.S. viewed queer people as a direct threat to the 'traditional American family.' According to Drexel, the "Cold War homosexual hunt" as he calls it made itself known on campus. In fact, in 1949, a group of football players murdered a member of the class of 1950, Raymond Cirrotta, who was rumored to be "both a communist and a homosexual." Campus culture even affected the portrayal of his death; publications seemed to imply that his murder was his fault.
What's new?
Even as the rise of traditional values and the "homosexual hunt" spread across the U.S., we see a surprisingly high number of post-war queer stories. The Buddy Story trope becomes popular once again. This likely occurs in response to stories of men together from the war. Interestingly, this is the opposite of what happened after World War I. From this, we can infer that anxiety around homosexuals may have had more to do with sexual relations between men rather than close friendships between them. Additionally, there are no writers from this time that published more than one queer story, indicating that while the editorial board may have been comfortable with publishing queer stories, individuals were likely afraid of consequences they themselves would face if they tested their own limits too much.
In Conclusion:
Throughout the early 20th century, literary magazines published works of fiction with queer themes. While there was not a constant stream of published queer stories throughout the whole 40 year period I considered, the rises and falls lined up more with the beginnings and ends of publications rather than the any other variable. Queer stories didn't become more popular over time, but they became popular just after a publication began, and just before the publication ran out of money. While the hyper-masculine campus culture may have led to the decrease in incoming funds each time a publication fell out of print, it would not be too surprising for us to one day learn that administrations played a role in shutting down publications when they started testing their limits too much.
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Overall through, it is important for us to reflect on the fact that queer students likely had the possibility to find homes within literary spaces on campus, as early as 1910. Additionally, students who themselves felt they were unable to write for a publication either because their skills lied outside of writing, or because they were too afraid to express their identity in a public setting, were able to read about characters like themselves on the pages of each of these magazines.
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Now, it is important for us to keep exploring these communities to uncover more of Dartmouth's LGBTQ+ History.