There are notable records of homosexual activity among Cambridge academics in the 1910's, '20s and '30s that seem to suggest that it was a fairly common practice despite the law. Some of the best are found in letters and records kept by members of the Bloomsbury group and others attending the university around that time, including what may be my favourite historical document ever; a comprehensive table of male-male sexual encounters recorded in meticulous detail by none other than John Maynard Keynes himself.

The philosopher G.E. Moore writes of the time that "When I came up to Cambridge, I did not know that there would be a single man in Cambridge who fornicated; and, till a year ago, I had no idea that sodomy was ever practised in modern times. My discoveries on these points have naturally brought the subject very much before my mind, and perhaps made me attach an undue importance to it; though I had been long familiar with the extent of the vice in Greece and Rome, and had often read of it merely to indulge my lust."

Moore was a member of the (in)famous Cambridge Conversazione Society, perhaps better known as the Cambridge Apostles. The Apostles provided a particular locus for male-male love and there is evidence to suggest that they actively celebrated homosexuality and bisexuality in their discussions. The apostles counted among their members several very prominent gay men as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group, including Giles Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes. Moore’s biographer Paul Levy writes that Strachey’s election to the Apostles "altered the character of the Society almost immediately, transmuting its naughty verbal mannerisms and Walt Whitmanesque feelings of comradeship into overt full-blooded--almost aggressive--homosexuality."

The Bloomsbury Group are notable chiefly for their broad and disparate body of influential work, but are also notable for their extremely relaxed attitudes to homosexuality. Bertrand Russel later notes of their influence on the Apostles that "since [their] time, homosexual relations among the members were for a time common" and the same can be said for homosexual relationships between members of the Bloomsbury Group themselves. Keynes records in his two page sex spreadsheet (Reference Number JMK/PP/20A in the collection of Keynes’ papers held by Cambridge’s Janus Archives {formerly MM/14}) sexual encounters with both Lytton Strachey and James Strachey as well as Duncan Grant, Alfred “Dilly” Knox, Arthur “Hobby” Hobhouse, Daniel de Mendi MacMillan (of MacMillan publishing) and the Indian polymath (and handsome devil) Benoy Kumar Sarkar.  

Although Keynes often wrote of a fear of being discovered, he was at least comfortable enough that he was able to “cruise” in London and Cambridge and he records one night stands or short trysts with people whose names he did not know (Lift Boy of Vauxhall, Auburn Haired of Marble Arch, Cairo, Stable Boy of Park Lane) which seems to indicate that there was a furtive but accessible gay “scene” in England at the time. A potentially apocryphal anecdote (too entertaining to omit despite its questionable provenance) is recorded by Keynes’ biographer Davenport-Hines in which he and his boyfriend Francis “Bubbles” Arthur St George Nelson are picked up by a physician’s wife who bids them “disport” while she watches. Keynes, suddenly taken with nerves, goes for a short stroll and returns with “a young man from Ealing” who he finds outside the Lyons Corner House café in Coventry Street, which was apparently a well-known pick-up spot before the four get down to business together. The anecdote, if true, seems to indicate that the gay scene in London was well enough established to have become associated with certain locales and establishments.

How broadly the attitudes of the Bloomsbury Group and the Apostles reflected the attitudes of Cambridge society at large is up to debate, but there seems to be a consensus that it was good to be up at Cambridge or Oxford if one wished to be queer, male and sexually active in the period between world wars. I think, though, that it would be wishful thinking to imagine that the climate of the universities was such that it allowed people to be “out” publicly in the same way that they could be today. The character of the interactions between gay men at the universities during this period is often furtive and coloured by a looming fear of discovery except when among very close and trusted friends.

P.S. If anybody can confirm the Davenport-Hines anecdote I would be extremely pleased. I rather hope that it is true.

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