Howard Sturgis, _Belchamber_

 HOWARD STURGIS WAS the son of a wealthy American man of business who chose to move his family to London. Sturgis attended Eton and Cambridge and was only in his early thirties when both his parents died, leaving him with an enormous fortune. He bought a handsome house in Windsor, set himself up there with "his stolid, pleasant lover, William Haynes-Smith, known simply as 'the Babe'," and for years entertained an "unending stream" of friends, "many of them younger homosexuals," drawn there by "the lively conversation, the alternate currents of stylish bitchiness and genuine affection, and the studied luxuries" (all quotations are from Edmund White's introduction to the NYRB Books edition). Guests included a panoply of literary men, including Henry James, and a few women, including Edith Wharton, who referred to the rest of the set as her "male wives."

I wish Sturgis had written a novel about the scene at his house, but the one he did write is nonetheless worth reading. Belchamber is about Charles Edwin William Augustus Chambers, Marquis and Earl of Belchamber, Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambers, the first-born in (obviously) an aristocratic English family who is still a child when the early death of his father leaves him with a vast fortune and a collection of titles.

Sainty (as he is always called) is, however, in for a hard time. For one thing, as his nickname hints, he is a holy fool, guileless, unsuspecting, unselfish, too good for this world.  For another thing, Sainty is ill at ease with his assigned gender. He likes sewing better than hunting. The word for him in 1904, when the novel was published, would have been "sissy," but we might go with "queer."

Things go about as well for Sainty as they do for Dostoevsky's holy fool, Prince Myshkin, in The Idiot, with the added complication of his queerness. Various prospects for happiness open up for Sainty, but something always goes wrong, usually in consequence of someone or other opportunistically taking advantage of Sainty's trust and innocence. The end is heartbreaking.

Sturgis reportedly was quite cast down by Henry James's not liking Belchamber. James's stated reason was that Sturgis did not know the English upper class well enough to present them in a novel, but one wonders if the Master found the portrait of queerness disconcertingly close to home. In any case, kudos to NYRB Books for bringing this unique novel back into print.